Brothers and Strangers
by Janissa11
Summary: Secrets have always been the Winchesters' stock in trade, but one particular sin of omission may cost them everything they have left. GEN. WIP. Adult language warning.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's notes:** My thanks for the kind reviews of "On the Snap," and here is the first chapter of a new story, much, much longer. This is a WIP, just so you know, although quite a bit is already done. There will be three main sections, of which the first is from Dean's POV, the second from Sam's, and the third -- projected -- all three Winchesters. It's also a big, gigantic, ginormous owwie-wallow, so approach accordingly. NO WINCEST. This is a gen story, through and through. My thanks to my marvelous betas for their kind words and invaluable input. _

_Hope you enjoy! EB_

* * *

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

The wind is tossing the lilacs,  
The new leaves laugh in the sun,  
And the petals fall on the orchard wall,  
But for me the spring is done.

Beneath the apple blossoms  
I go a wintry way,  
For love that smiled in April  
Is false to me in May.

(Sara Teasdale, "May")

**Part One**

**1.**

In all the adrenaline and fear and busyness of getting Sam to the hospital, there isn't time to think. Just do. Dean hears it clanging inside his head: make Sammy all right, please God, make him okay and that's all I ask.

And behind it, like a voice muffled by thick heavy black curtains: did you HEAR? Did you SEE? Was it real?

Doesn't matter. He frets and paces and drinks too much muddy hospital coffee, doesn't think about anything but seeing that door open, seeing the relieved look on the doctor's face, seeing his goddamn brother open his eyes and smile at him. No biggie, Dean. Get me outta here.

Except that's not quite what happens. There's the doc, yeah, but he doesn't look as kind and relieved as Dean wants, needs to see. Instead there's a couple of uncomfortable chairs and a lightbox covered with x-rays, and a completely unnecessary anatomical explanation of where the bullet is lodged, and what it will take to get it out.

Dean nods and then shakes his head. "Will it work?" he asks.

"Most likely," the doctor says, and there is doubt like heavy fog in his eyes.

They let him see Sammy before whisking him off to surgery. Not too much point to it; Sam's out like a light, and if he knows Dean's here he's keeping it to himself. Somehow that's kinda better. Dean wipes his eyes and clears his throat until it hurts, and says, "Don't have time to dick around, Sammy. Time's wasting and we got work to do, all right? Important shit, so you get it together real quick, got that?"

His throat aches when they roll Sam away, too, but it isn't anything but dumb misery. He's pretty sure he's not gonna breathe again until he gets the good word from the surgeon, so he goes outside, bums a smoke off a guy near the exit, and lights it before hitting the speed-dial on his phone. The wind is blowing, and he can hear the scuff of it over the receiver, wonders how clear his message will be.

"Dad, listen. Just wanted to keep you updated, you know. Sam got into it pretty bad a little while ago, and he's in –" Dean has to clear his throat again, and it feels like he's chewed glass and swallowed it. "—surgery right now, fixing him up. I mean, he's gonna be okay, you know. But we're." Another dagger in his throat, this one sending a lightning bolt down into his chest. "Out of commission for a little while. I mean, me, I'm fine, you know, so if you need anything. Just. Call. We're in K.C. Okay."

He finishes the cigarette without tasting any of it, eyes stinging in the wind, and finds someone else to give him another before he slowly goes upstairs.

There's a nice, enormous waiting room, and it's filled with people who are just as scared as he is. It's not the kind of fear he can do anything about, can't throw holy water on it and make it disappear, pour salt around his own chair so it can't reach him. He's got no protections. He watches a girl crying, a man who must be her father touching her shoulder with a face filled with helpless misery, and Dean looks away before he can start imagining what's happened to them, who they are. Doesn't matter. What matters is down the hall, sleeping while someone Dean has never seen before cuts into his body and tries to fix what's broken.

He doesn't read, stands at one of the enormous windows and stares down at the people, the cars. Thinks about going to get something to eat, only his throat is too painful to allow it even if his stomach would, and maybe walking over to the convenience store he can see way down on the corner, buying his own smokes and a six-pack, sit in the car and smoke and drink for a while. He's been alone so much, he's been lonely before, and right now he's the only person on the planet minus two who even knows he's alive, literally, and one of those two is a figurative ghost and the other is in a medically induced coma on an operating table.

He wants to cry, and can't allow it. And he would give anything – anything in his power, at all – to not be alone right now.

Most of the other families have gone by the time the surgeon shows up. It's late, sun starting to dive into the west, and the girl he saw earlier left long ago. Dean flinches when he hears his name called, the one he's going by, at least, and walks fast to the desk.

The surgeon's young, stylishly bald, and he's taken the time to put his suit back on instead of coming out in scrubs. It pisses Dean off; he wants to see hurry, not take-it-easy casual.

The surgeon grins at him. "He's going to be fine, just fine," he says, nodding, and Dean instantly forgives him for the suit thing. "They're just taking him over to SICU for the night, okay? Just to monitor him. But the surgery went fine, everything looked great, and we ought to be able to move him to a regular room tomorrow."

Dean nods feverishly. "So he's -- His legs. They're okay."

"I'm pretty sure you've been told about swelling, right? It's impossible to say with complete certainty what the eventual outcome will be. But the bullet only nicked the vertebra, Mr. Martinez, didn't sever the spinal cord. We've got him on heavy steroids, fight the swelling, and we'll be watching him close." The surgeon smiles again, blinding white grin, and pats Dean's tense arm. "Your brother, right?"

"He's – all I got," Dean manages, and is ashamed of how shaky it sounds.

"We'll take care of him. I'll be by late this evening when I do my rounds, and if there are any changes we'll talk again then, all right? Take care, Mr. Martinez."

Dean watches him go, and flinches again when the reception lady says, "Martinez, right?"

Dean stares at her, nods.

"Your loved one is going to SICU bed 42. You should be able to go see him tonight, regular visiting hours. Seven o'clock."

"I want to see him now," Dean says hoarsely.

The woman's face wears a practiced comforting smile. "I understand, sir, but they're pretty strict about keeping hours in the ICU. So the patients can rest."

He makes himself nod, and wanders out to the elevator.

* * *

There's a flyer about motels with medical rates in the hospital lobby. He notes one of them, decides since he's got time to kill he'll go grab a room, at least take a shower. It's something to do. 

The motel's little and shabby, which is familiar in its own way, even if he's never seen it before. The room is just like so many others, almost like coming home. He slings his bag on one of the beds, drops his keys on the dresser, and strips efficiently, shivering a little because the heater is just coming on.

At least there's plenty of hot water. And while he rubs shampoo into his hair he coughs a hoarse sob, and it's been a suck-ass night and day so he's generous, allows the sob a couple of siblings before swallowing it all back, squeezing his eyes shut and pushing it down again. No going to visit Sammy looking like he's been bawling like a girl. Not good for his recovery.

He leans against the tile wall, lets the water sluice over him, and hears that tinny, artificial voice again. "He never told you the truth. Would you like to know?"

It's absurd. He should simply shove it away like he did his tears, toss it like the garbage it is and go on. But he's exhausted, more tired than he can remember being in months, and he hears the voice going on, that whispered tittered litany of secrets, standing again in a dark foul-smelling hallway with Sam's bleeding body at his feet, and he feels that same bewildered shock, like a slow buzz of alcohol in his veins, clouding his mind.

It can't be. It just can't. Because God is a card sharp, a narrow-eyed trickster with sleeves full of aces and jokers both, but this card isn't one He's allowed to play. It goes beyond the worst Dean's ever been able to think up, his superstitious Dad-trained habit of envisioning the worst-case scenarios and preparing for them as eventualities. "Whatever you think of, whatever you CAN think of – there will be something worse down the line, Dean." Dad's face, beardless then and grim, eyes so flinty-hard Dean felt like his gaze hurt. "Guarantee it. So when you look around you, see what can go wrong, and how you'd fix it if you have to. All we got is each other. Nobody else looking out for us."

Dad never told him this one, though. Never even hinted at it. And all the time Dean's been vigilant, he's kept his eyes open when he would pay any amount of money on the damn planet just to relax a little, just to sleep soundly and wake up when he was rested, lie around and think happy thoughts for a change. He's come up with a thousand escape plans and Plan Bs and Plan Cs and Ds, he's read and studied and worked out compulsively, always scared there'll be one time he's not strong enough, fast enough, one injury he can't recover completely from, one that will mean he's out, he's done, he's finished.

But he's never envisioned this. It's insane, that's why. Completely and totally, unquestionably insane.

He towels himself dry, shaves in the foggy mirror, brushes his teeth and stares at himself. But while he dresses, while he forces down a fast-food burger sitting in the car and then pulls out to head back over to the SICU, he can't push that demon's metallic voice down deep enough that its fork-on-chalkboard voice doesn't still resonate in his bones.

Almost. But not quite.

* * *

_TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**2.**

It's two days before Sam's out of SICU, thanks to his reluctance to really wake up, and Dean listens to the speeches about low tolerance to painkillers and heavy sedation and nods and feels his stomach clench. It's wrong, seeing Sam this way, it's a terrifying slap in the face. Dean would have shoved him out of the way if he'd only been there faster, if he'd sensed what Sam did and went that direction, too, instead of listening to reason and the whispering ghost of Dad living in his brain and checked out the opposite end of the hallway. He'd have taken that bullet, absolutely no problem, but he blew it, wasn't there when the chips were down, and now he spends his precious visiting hours staring at Sam's slumbering face, wondering if Sam is going to walk again and whether or not Dean can live with it if he doesn't.

Sam moves to a room on the eleventh floor finally, a regular room. It's such a relief Dean feels a little lightheaded – no more strictly regimented visiting hours, he can park his sorry ass here 24/7 and no one will say he can't – and Sam even smiles at him, whispers hoarsely that he's sorry he didn't listen to Dean when he should have. Dean swallows and says, "Yeah, next time I'm just gonna step over you and go get a beer," but he won't, he won't he won't he won't, and Sam's smile says he knows it good and damn well, too.

But he can't sleep, can't eat, and during the PA's visit the next morning Dean comes so close to passing out cold that the guy gives him a hard-ass lecture on exhaustion and actually calls a cab for him to go home, get some sleep. Dean won't, and next thing he knows the guy's calling Transportation to get a wheelchair and take him down to the ER for some IV fluids and tranquilizers. It takes all Dean's sweet-talking skills to get the PA to lighten up, and he takes the cab. Goes back to the motel and sleeps for nineteen hours straight.

And when he gets up, groggily stunned at the hour, the DAY, he can still hear that chittering voice, so goddamn HAPPY. Happy at his shock, unspeakably thrilled at his instinctive denials.

"Didn't you ever suspect?" it asks him, again and again while he drinks shitty motel coffee, tries to wake up and get moving. "Deep down, didn't you KNOW?"

"Fuck you," Dean whispers in his empty motel room, clutching the cup so hard he feels coffee slopping over his fingers. "Demons lie. You LIE."

All there is is tinkly laughter, like banging fists on a child's toy piano, and he gulps the rest of his coffee and grabs his jacket and keys.

* * *

On day five, Sam moves his toes. This time Dean has to cry, although it's cool because Sam's kinda watery too, and they joke about it, and it feels so damn good Dean can barely remember the cold misery of the past week.

"Man, where are you staying?" Sam asks, after the nurse has come and shot him full of something and gone again. He looks tired, fragile, but Dean will take it. Oh, yes, he'll take it without complaining at all.

"Some crappy place a few blocks west." Dean snorts and then grins. "Same shithole, different day, right?"

"You okay?"

Dean meets Sam's bleary eyes steadily, says, "I'm fine, Sammy. You know, your nurse isn't half bad. Bet she'd play 'This Little Piggy' with you if you asked real nice."

Sam laughs, rolls his eyes. "I'll leave that to you, man."

"Hey, it's not me acting like a toe wiggle is the cure for cancer, dude."

"Asshole."

"Bitch."

Sam mouths something that looks like, "prick," and is asleep. But he's still smiling, and so is Dean.

* * *

"Rehab," Sam says the next morning.

Dean nods cautiously. "Okay, so -- What's that mean, exactly?"

"Rehabilitation, moron. Physical therapy."

"I grasp the concept, Sam. How long?"

Sam glances out the window, his frown still in place. He's been in an ugly mood since Dean got here, close on the heels of the departing neurosurgeon, and Dean wants to ask him what changed, what crawled up Sam's ass last night and turned him into Queen Bitch of the Universe, but he's trying really hard to be nice, be all supportive and shit, and he waits, semi-patiently, for the rest of the story.

"Two weeks," Sam whispers. "In-patient, in a rehab hospital."

Dean blinks. "That's AFTER you get done here? Holy crap."

"And then outpatient, two more weeks." Sam turns his sour face back to Dean. "We don't HAVE a month to sit around and do nothing," he says.

"Well, it sure as hell beats a wheelchair the rest of your life, doesn't it?"

It's the wrong thing to say, somehow, he knows it when he sees Sam's scowl. "Fuck you," Sam says.

"Look, all I did was come see you, dude." Dean raises his hands, leans back in his chair. "This is the way it is. You gotta deal. We both do."

"And just how do you think we'll pay for it, Dean?" Sam snaps. "You gonna hustle fourteen thousand games of pool for it? Knock over a convenience store, what?"

Dean looks away. "I already talked to them."

"To who?"

"The hospital. Financial stuff."

Sam's staring at him so intently, Dean wants to fidget, and won't. It blew, that long meeting yesterday afternoon. No goddamn credit cards would cover the amount of money they owe now. $90,000 and change, and Sam isn't even out of the hospital yet.

"What did they say?"

Dean licks his lips and shrugs. "Charity case. They got this program, something. I got a card. Blue one. So we only gotta pay about ten percent, when it's all said and done."

"Dean, that's still a lot of money –"

"Look, I'm not sitting here wringing my hands over my credit rating," Dean says hoarsely. "That's bullshit. I mean, we're not even using real names. Whatever – It's worth it, okay? Long as you get better. So shut up."

Sam regards him silently, but the anger has left his eyes, and after a moment he nods. "I'd be so screwed if you weren't here," he says hoarsely.

"And don't you forget it." But Dean cracks a smile, and so does Sam, and it's okay.

* * *

Sam's going to the rehab facility on Friday. The night before, they eat contraband burgers Dean's smuggled up to the floor and argue over whether to watch Survivor or some boring-ass rerun of a stuffed-shirt courtroom drama thing, and this time Dean wins, because first, Sam's going to be fine, and this babying thing starts to get tiring after a while, and second, Dean's got a thing for the blonde with the legs up past there.

"God forbid I should stand between you and your libido," Sam grouches, and Dean gives him a sunny smile and takes the pickles off his burger.

He stays past time for him to leave, since nobody enforces shit anyway, and after the news is over and Leno's yapping something about Bush, Dean asks, "You have your birth certificate?"

Sam's sleepy, and yawns before he says, "A copy. Got it for Stanford, stashed it someplace." He peers at Dean. "Why?"

Dean chews on his lip. "No reason, I don't guess." He glances at the tv. "Never had a copy, myself."

"Does it matter?"

"Nah."

"Dean…."

He looks back. "What?"

Sam's sorta smiling and frowning at the same time. "It does matter, doesn't it?" he asks softly.

Dean shrugs. "Just curious. I mean, never needed it for anything."

"Not even for your driver's license? The real one, that is?"

"Dad took care of that. We went together. Guess they didn't need it or something. Whatever."

But he looks away when he says it, because he remembers that day. They were in Oklahoma then, end of what passed for Dean's sophomore year in high school, considering they'd lived four places already that year and Dean could see it in Dad's eyes, the fact that they'd be hitting the road again soon. But Dean needed a license, was doing a hell of a lot of driving without one and only a matter of time before some state trooper got vigilant, so Dad drove him to the DMV and Dean took his tests, the Impala like an extension of his own body, and the guy in the passenger's seat was actually impressed with Dean's skills, complimented him. Dean nearly told him he'd been driving that car since he was twelve, but didn't.

But he doesn't remember his father flashing a birth certificate. Just Dean getting his picture taken, and a piece of paper for a temporary license until he got the real thing in the mail. Which missed them by the time it arrived; they were in Boise then, and Dean killed his first vampire and lost his virginity both the week before that envelope arrived marked "general delivery."

Looked like a dork in the picture, anyway.

Sam clears his throat, and Dean looks at him reluctantly. "If it's important to you," Sam says, "then go get a copy."

"We aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto."

"Almost. Easy drive."

Nothing easy about it. Dean sighs. "Huh."

"Want to know where to go? Go to –"

"I got it, I got it." Dean flips him off and goes back to not-watching Leno.

Before he leaves, he tucks Sam in elaborately, just to piss him off. They start laughing, and the nurse comes in with Sam's nightly pharmaceutical whammy and gripes at them for being noisy, so Dean skulks out, still grinning and shaking his head.

"Tomorrow morning!" Sam bellows behind him. "Be here before eight!"

"Or what?" Dean bellows back, ignoring the nurse.

"Dude, I'm in a hospital! You don't think I can summon a ghost or a shade or something to open a can of ectoplasmic whoop-ass on you? Because I will! You mark my words!"

Dean's laughing so hard he doesn't have the breath to yell anything else, and when he leans in the door he sees tears streaming down Sam's face, and he's making that seal-barking noise that means he's completely lost it and if he were eating or drinking anything he'd be snorting it out his nose. "I'll be here," Dean gasps, and has to hold himself up on the door frame until he can calm down enough to walk out again.

But he gasps little wheezes of laughter all the way down in the elevator, and people give him the funny looks but he doesn't give a damn. Sam's sprung tomorrow, and even if it's just to go to another goddamn hospital, at least it's progress in the right direction. That's good enough for tonight.

He doesn't bother with a shower when he gets to the room. Just goes to bed, not laughing anymore but still feeling that good ache in his belly, and he's asleep before the whispering can even start.


	3. Chapter 3

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**3.**

The new hospital's a lot the same as the old, just smaller. A little bit further from Dean's motel, but that's all right. He isn't late, but really he's just in the way; the transfer's done by ambulance, and once Sam's there they have a thousand tests to do and people practically lined up outside to go over schedules with him, all that happy crappy, so Dean says he'll be back later that afternoon once all Sammy's adoring public has left, and splits.

Driving to Topeka, he can hear the whisper again. Quieter now, like it knows it's succeeded. Which is dumb, because that particular demon is deader than dead, and won't be whispering its very not-sweet nothings to anyone ever again. But its voice lingers, like a tape loop from Hell, and Dean can't help listening.

It's an hour's drive, but traffic's a stone bitch, and it's past noon before Dean finds the right office and gets a parking space. And then he's gotta wait until they open after the lunch hour, but finally he's there. The clerk is young and cute, and he talks on automatic pilot, smiling and complimenting her, seeing the quick warmth in her pretty brown eyes, and all the time he's aware of his heartbeat, fast and light and anxious in his chest. He plops down his driver's license and hopes she can't tell it's been altered, expired two years ago but the guy in Philly did real good work, and it passes without comment.

"It'll be a few minutes before it's ready," she tells him. "Do you want it notarized?"

Dean shakes his head. "Nah. That's okay. Just the copy."

"We'll call you when it's done." She bats thick eyelashes at him. "You want some coffee or something while you wait?"

"No, thanks. Nice of you to ask, though."

She sucks on her lower lip and says, "Just doing my job," in a tone that says they both know she never, but never, offers to get coffee for anyone.

It's busy, lots of people, and his smile slips the minute he walks away from the counter. His hands are very cold. What does it mean? He's here because some desperate entity based entirely on evil sussed out Dean's weakest spots and took advantage of one of them. Christ, he's acting like the rankest amateur. Dad would never have fallen for it, not in a million. Probably not Sam, either. But Dean, oh well, Dean's the guy who always had to cling to people, and maybe Sam could talk about walking away from it all but Dean never could, and feels his blood pressure jump a hundred points every time Sam decides to dust off the old "you gotta let me go" speech. Dean isn't sure what he'll do when the actual day comes around again. Because it will, they'll find what they're after and kill its ass, and if they both make it through then Sam's gone, and Dean isn't sure he can let that happen. What will happen if he stands in Sam's way. Would it change his mind? Or just turn Dean into another obstacle to deal with? Like this fire demon, a roadblock between Sam and law school and normal life and all that?

Dean doesn't know, and thinking about it hurts his head. His mouth is so dry he's tempted to tell the clerk he's changed his mind about the coffee, but drinks from a rusty-tasting water fountain instead, goes back to the window and stares out. Checks his watch every twenty seconds or so.

At half an hour he takes the battered smokes out of his jacket pocket and steps outside for a cig. Sam hasn't asked why Dean smells smoky a lot of the time, and Dean figures he's assuming it's hustling some pool, bar-hopping, something. Only it really isn't; he'll quit when he's not so tense, but he's up to nearly a pack a day again, and it's ridiculously comforting. He quit ages ago, and swore he'd never start up again, but it's because it's bad and nasty and something his dad hates that he ever did it at all, and now it just feels right.

Five minutes after he walks back in, the girl waves him over. She isn't smiling. "I'm really sorry, sir, but we can't locate any birth records for you in Kansas."

Dean just stares at her. Her voice is ringing in his ears, really ringing, echoing like he's inside some gigantic cave, and it takes him a second to get her meaning. Then he shakes his head. "You gotta have it. This is the right office, right?"

"You're definitely in the right place for Kansas records, but I didn't find a thing. I'm sorry, are you sure of the name, all that?"

"It's my name," Dean says hoarsely. "I'm pretty damn sure of it, yeah. I was born in Lawrence. Does that help?"

"We index by name as well as location and social security number. Is there any chance you could be listed under your mother's maiden name?"

He licks his dry lips. "My folks got married in 1977. Two years before I was born. We lived in Lawrence until I was four."

The girl looks honestly troubled. "I don't know what to tell you. I did a comprehensive search. I found a lot of Winchesters statewide, but no Dean. Nothing."

He keeps on looking at her, and finally swallows. "Okay, then. Thanks."

"Sorry."

His feet feel numb while he walks outside, stands on the sidewalk and breathes deeply. And in his mind, the demon laughs and laughs.

* * *

It's early yet, and he has noplace to be. He has decided not to think about what's just happened. It's like touching a hot tooth with your tongue, or jostling a broken arm; it's better to just be very still and don't mess with it. 

He drives west, and when the first Lawrence exit comes he takes it, driving as if his bones are made of glass. His heart is slow and not frantic; his hands are warm. Biofeedback, one of his dad's weird buddies that long stint in Syracuse used to talk about that, controlling your bodily functions by absolute focus. Dean hadn't bothered to tell the shithead he'd been practicing the same ideas all on his own for two years already, ever since Denton and the harpy. Sitting against that cold brick wall, in absolute darkness, one bullet left and no Dad and his blood like cold maple syrup in his twelve-year-old veins. He'd willed himself to be still as death, and hadn't been at all amazed, just grateful, when everything slowed down, his pulse, his respiration, until he felt like part of that wall, solid and static and safe.

And when she'd crept out, fooled, he had calmly looked up and shot her right in her bitch's face. Dad hadn't even had to draw his weapon. It was one of the rare times when Dad had been sort of speechless, so impressed by that, and Dean would have been jazzed if he hadn't had to go puke a few seconds later, because he had harpy brains all over his face and shirt.

He's calm like that now, still and distant, but there's a breathless feel to it too, as if this is the smooth glaze over a jagged cutting edge, and he will not, will NOT fuck with it. He drives aimlessly at first, glancing at semi-familiar landmarks, wondering when the pain will start. He doesn't like coming to this town, didn't like it when he was here with Sam a while back and likes it less now. But it's appropriate, walk down memory lane, stop and smell the stupid flowers, so he slows in front of the park where he and Mom had gone every Saturday, and sometimes Dad, too, always to feed the ducks and play on the pretty decent equipment, hang out with other little kids and build some social skills. He doesn't remember it well, just fragments, bits and pieces like a model someone just started to put together. He remembers a store on the corner, but there's a fast-food place there now, and instead of an empty lot up ahead there's a shopping center, and really, nothing looks like the memories he's so carefully packed away for himself, safe where he doesn't have to see them unless he wants to. Now he does, but they are nothing more than fleeting images, ghosts in his glassy machine, and they have very little power any longer.

He sits with the Impala idling at the corner, considering whether or not to turn or go straight. It should be a momentous decision, but after the events of a few months ago it, too, is weaker, and when he turns and drives by the house it seems smaller, just a place, a car in the driveway and mail on the mat. He doesn't stop to check in. It's in the past, and for the first time he can remember, he wonders if all of it should be there, too. All the memories, the quests, the hunting and searching and killing. What's it for? Revenge? What does it change?

He parks near a pizza place close to the highway, but doesn't get out. He's shaking all over suddenly, and it's like the harpy all over again, this desperate clawing for control. It proves nothing. Only that he's a numb fuck who'd believe anything anyone said to him. No wonder Sam wants to get this over with and head back to sunny CA. Dean's too dumb to live.

Sam. Sam will know what to do. Dean's face is cold, and he reaches up and wipes his cheeks with dull surprise. He's tired, that's all. Tired, and he'll never come to Lawrence again, so he's saying goodbye to all this, those fabled happy first four years and the house where he lived for that time, and that's why he's cried. But he's all right, and he'll be better once he talks to Sam. Sam's the one who'll make it make sense. Because Sam's good at that. Better than Dean ever was.

He hits the highway at a quarter of three, the numbness gone, speeding with Ozzy playing, that tape that's been cranky ever since Sam stepped on it back outside Phoenix. The warble in the middle of "No More Tears" makes Dean smile instead of frowning like it usually does.

* * *

But Sam's had a full day, a rough day from all appearances. He's tired, cranky as shit, and plainly jealous that Dean's been out fucking around and he's stuck in a goddamn hospital bed. 

"So what did you do?" Sam asks, in a tone that doesn't want to know.

"Drove around, I guess. Went to Topeka. And Lawrence."

Sam nods, and says, "Wow. Lawrence? What brought that on?"

Dean looks away. "Just on the way. You know, back here."

"Right. Tell me another one."

It's on the tip of Dean's tongue to say it. I did what you said, and you know what, there isn't anything. What's that mean, Sam? Clerical error? What?

He thinks it, and sees the exhaustion in Sam's eyes, the tight lines around his mouth that don't belong there, and bites it back. "No big deal," he says instead, and they both know it's a lie, but for different reasons, and Dean clears his throat. "So I'm thinking, you know. Since we're gonna be here at least another month. Maybe I should get a job or something."

"You?" Sam's dryness sucks all the light right out of the air. "That'll be the day."

"Look, before I started dragging your whiny ass around with me everywhere, I had jobs. They were crap," Dean admits before Sam can bitch, "okay, yeah. But I earned a paycheck here and there. You think I can hustle ALL the time? In my dreams, maybe."

In fact he doesn't mind pool, or the smoke and tension of a good risky game, but he's never wanted to do it exclusively, and Kansas City isn't a good location, in any case. He doesn't have a lot of a face, but there are some guys who remember like fucking elephants, and most of those carry pool cues around with them like other men tote briefcases, so he thinks he'll probably have to make do with fake plastic and whatever temp work he can pick up for a while.

It'll work out. Always does.

"So did you walk?" Dean asks.

"Yes, I walked," Sam snaps. "Fourteen steps. Are you happy now?"

Dean rocks back. "Dude, fuck me for living. I was just ASKING, all right? Would you mind taking the fangs out of my throat?"

"Dean, I'm really tired." Sam doesn't even try to sugarcoat it. He just lays it out. "And this –" He swallows and looks away. "Is not where I want to be. So."

"So leave you the fuck alone, that what you're saying?" Dean gets up, smoothes his jeans unnecessarily. "All right, I can do that."

"Sorry. Just – been a long day."

"Tell me about it," Dean mutters, and makes himself pat Sammy's shoulder before he heads for the door. "Can I come see you tomorrow, or will you still think I look like a guy who needs two assholes?"

That gets him a weak puff of laughter, and Sam says, "Come back tomorrow."

"Okay. But I'm wearing a crucifix just in case."

"You're such a dick."

"Takes one to know one, little buddy."

He ducks the box of tissues Sam flings at him, and goes out.

And in the middle of the parking lot, just as his hand grabs the Impala's door handle, it swarms up in his throat, a choking mass of confusion and anger and thickest of all, grief so profound it rips the air from his chest, makes him wheeze and cough like a 40-year smoker.

Oh Christ, let it all be a mistake. Let this not be real. Because if it is, he is lost. Completely, totally lost.

It takes too long for him to get his shit back, and even then he's panting like he's run a five-minute mile, dizzy and frantic with the need to be someplace else, someplace with walls and a locked door and safety. So he hauls ass to the motel, parks the Impala crooked, and when the safety bolt is shot he leans against the door, listening to the steam-engine chug of his breathing and thanking God he's here.

He slumps on the bed, pulls the ancient chenille coverlet over his legs and up to his chin, and lies unblinking as evening turns to night, the random flash of car headlights in the window, the distant sounds of traffic and people talking, dogs barking, a plane overhead. Inside his room it is quiet as a grave.

* * *

_TBC._


	4. Chapter 4

_A.N.: Thank you for the kind reviews - I appreciate them muchly! Hope you enjoy the update as well. EB

* * *

_

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**4.**

Sam's shaking like a leaf, but he's walking, and the sight of it fills Dean with such relief his own knees aren't any too steady. It's not a surprise that Sammy's fine, but it's something to cling to, and Dean nods and calls out about the gym shorts thing and Sam's chicken legs, and when Sam flips him off both Dean and the therapist laugh.

"So you're basically fine," Dean says as he pushes Sam's wheelchair back to his room. "And all this is your idea of a vacation, right?"

"Yes, Dean, I always wanted to spend a couple of weeks in a rehab hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. You mean you don't share the dream?"

"More an Omaha man, myself. But whatever trips your trigger, dude."

It's true, Sam's walking, but he's not any too steady on his feet, and when Dean studies his face after they reach the room he sees exhaustion, and it's instinct that makes him ask, "Speaking of dreams. Any nightmares?"

Sam makes a face. "Just about the food."

Dean smiles, nods, and then says, "Seriously. Because you aren't sleeping, are you?"

"Some."

"And translated into actual meaningful words that's what? An hour or two a night?"

Sam sighs and shrugs. "Probably more."

"Maybe. Look, why don't you take a nap or something? I can split, it's not –"

"No, stick around. Unless –" Sam narrows his eyes. "You get a job?"

"Not yet. Thought I'd check with some agencies on Monday." Dean spreads his arms like a potentate. "You're fortunate enough to have me at your complete disposal for the entire day."

"Be still my beating heart," Sam says, and grins. The grin goes away too fast. "You've been letting it slide, haven't you?" he asks. "The work. The hunting."

"You kidding? I wasted a vamp on my way home last night. Piece of cake."

"You know, most people would think you were kidding."

"Ah, but we…are not most people, are we?"

Sam shakes his head. "I'm not the only one who looks tired, man. You weren't…serious about the vampire last night, were you?"

"Does watching 'Queen of the Damned' count?"

"That movie sucked."

"But she was a serious babe."

"Only you could make it sound like porn instead of a horror movie."

"What can I say? It's a gift."

"Hey, did you ever go get that birth certificate?"

Dean blinks, licks his lower lip. "I told you about that, remember? Topeka?"

Sam frowns. "You said you went, yeah."

"So."

"So you got it."

"Sure."

"Lemme see it."

Dean smiles. "It's in the car, dude. I don't carry it around with me. Just a piece of paper."

"I know. Still."

"What? You sound like you want to look at baby pictures next." Dean squints at him. "You sure they didn't perform a little elective gender-reassignment surgery while you were –"

"Would you stop calling me a girl every time I talk about anything that doesn't involve guns and/or blood?" Sam shoves his too-long hair out of his eyes, and sighs theatrically. "That schtick's getting old."

There are fifteen dozen possible responses on the tip of Dean's tongue: automatic as breathing, natural, appropriate. He can't say any of them. It's hard to banter right now, it's tiring, and he isn't about to tell Sam that sleep and Dean have been distant neighbors waving at each other across a wide field and then going their separate ways for the past few nights. Sam's the one with the bad dreams. Dean just can't sleep. It isn't a problem, just a brief annoyance. Not the same.

But he can't come up with anything stronger than, "Yeah, you're right," and that gets Sam's attention just as Dean hasn't wanted to.

"You aren't okay, are you?" Sam sits up, although it costs him some. His nostrils flare wide like he can smell it. "What's wrong? Is it Dad?"

"Last time I heard from Dad was the same time you heard from him," Dean says. "Nope." Something stirs in his belly, something rigid and hot and duskily angry.

"So what is it?" Sam presses. "Is it money?"

"No, it's not MONEY, Christ, Sammy, lay off. Move along."

Sam nods crisply. "So, like always, it's okay for you to worry about me, but when it comes time for me to worry about YOU, then just, you know, fuck you, Sam."

Dean leans forward, propelled by the sudden surge of bleakness inside him. "If there's something to worry about, then knock yourself out," he says tightly. "But for once in your life would you stop pushing? Should I learn how to say this shit in Norwegian or something? Maybe Spanish? Because what's it gonna take for you to just stop asking so many motherfucking QUESTIONS?"

Sam's gone very pale, and doesn't say anything, doesn't move, nothing. It's just come out of nowhere for him, and the crazy part is, it's done the same for Dean, because he has no idea why he's this angry all of a sudden. Just is, and right now he'd like to just walk. Just fucking walk away, stop it all.

And that's enough to make him sit up straight, shocked more deeply than by anything else that's gone on since that godawful night with the demon, because nothing – nothing, period – has ever made him really, truly think he could just turn his back on all of it. The work, his dad. Sam. Only for a second, he's seen it clear as day: what it would be like, if he could really just bail, just flip all of it the bird and hit the bricks.

But he's seen it, and what he's seen is – nothing. Just a gigantic, endless space of nothing at all. And how crazy is that, that he can't picture ANYTHING? Why is that?

"Jesus, Dean," Sam whispers. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Long day," Dean says in his rusty, automatic voice, and looks away before he can see Sam not buying it, as usual. "Listen, I gotta run a couple of errands, all right? I'll be back later."

"Yeah. Sure."

He makes it halfway to the door before Sam says, "You're in my dreams."

Dean freezes, doesn't look back.

Sam sounds meditative, distant. "At least I think it's you. You won't look at me. Like you won't right now. It's – foggy or something. And I think, He's lost, Dean's lost, and if he'd just come with me, follow me, I could make sure he's safe. He's found."

"That a vision or a threat?" Dean asks hollowly.

"Just now -- Is it me you're pissed at, Dean? Because if it is –"

"Not pissed at anybody." It takes everything he has to turn, meet Sam's imploring eyes. "Way to take things personally, bro."

It's true, he's not pissed AT Sammy, but he can't say it, and Sam doesn't believe it. "Maybe it's just a dream," Sam says stiffly. "Or maybe it's something else."

Dean shifts from one foot to another, hands in his pockets. Deeply unsure of himself, as discussion of these weird visions of Sam's always make him. Doesn't seem right, Sam all psychic and shit. Not that Dean doesn't believe it. He's got no reason not to, and more than one reason to trust whatever the hell it is Sam can do. But it's as if the things they fight on a near-daily basis, or did before Sam got shot, have blurred the lines somehow, violated the little bubble of normal the two of them carry around with them. Normal, like, ordinary. Just two guys. Sam's not just his brother any longer, he's something else, too, and Dean doesn't like being reminded of that. Not when it's so far beyond anything he himself can understand, or help with. He's just a goddamn bystander, some loser watching the train wreck that's Sam's life, and he's never liked it, never will like it. He likes things he can punch, shoot, stab, not fucking premonitions.

"Well, I'm not lost," he says more sharply than he means. "So you can cross that one off your list. And in case you forgot, I'm not much of the following type."

There's no anger in Sam's dark eyes, only worry. "You in trouble, Dean?" he asks softly. "You'd tell me if you were. Right?"

"Right," Dean says flatly. "Sure. Now can I go, or you want to extend this little bonding session some more?"

"Come on, Dean. Christ –"

"Look, I can't go by – dreams and shit. All right? I deal with what's in front of me. That's what I do. So, you know, that's the way things are. Right?"

Now Sam IS wounded, and Dean recognizes it with a dull sense of familiarity. He clears his throat and shakes his head. "Just got shit on my mind, dude. Don't take it so goddamn personally."

Sam looks away.

"See you later, okay?"

"Yeah. See you later."

Sam still hasn't looked at him when Dean shrugs and heads back to the door.

* * *

Face or not, he's getting very low on cash, and the motel room's on plastic but he likes to eat occasionally, too, so he winds up in a bar he remembers from two or three years back, some grungy place where nobody comes for the ambience, and they're all there to play. Not Dean's usual sort of place; there aren't many women, and those who do show are there to watch the play, not drink and get picked up. 

For this, he takes the cue from the back of the Impala. Doesn't usually use it, not for hustling; walk in with an expensive cue and it's like a neon sign over your head saying "shark." But he's not hustling tonight, he's really playing, and he eyes the hand-lettered sign on the front door, tournament, checks out the prize money and thinks that would help. No illusions he'll get it, but a few good games might help his piss-poor mood.

He sees a few guys he recognizes, fewer who recognize him. It's so smoky it looks like fog, and he thinks about Sam's goddamn dreams and then shakes his head, shakes it off.

"Gonna play or just contemplate your navel?"

Dean stares at the bearded guy with the sign-up sheet and shrugs. "Either one, if there's money in it," he says, and the guy gives a slow grin.

He drinks Coke, because booze fucks his concentration, not to mention his game, and shakes hands with his first opponent, a long skinny drink of water who'd look geeky if it weren't for the leathers he wears. Heavy Buddy-Holly glasses and hands the size of truck tires. He reminds Dean of Sam, in a sort of unwashed way, and Dean wearily acknowledges the stab of guilt in his belly and watches the break. Nothing goes in, and he slides his hand over his cue, thinks, All right, then, and looks for the one ball.

It's good, not hustling, not constantly thinking about sixty things while he's also trying to play. Just the stick and the green, and the single ball wearing stripes instead of solids. His cue feels like it's grafted onto his arm, just pointing where those balls are gonna go, and they obey like good little soldiers, marching off to battle, one after another. He skips the combo shot because he ain't in the mood, and doesn't pay any attention to the guy standing nearby looking uneasy. He's completely inconsequential. There's Dean and the table, and that's all that matters.

They run to five, and Dean shakes the guy's sweaty hand and finishes his Coke, waiting for his next assignment.

More people watch his second set, and there are plenty of sightseers for the third, because this one's a local hero, and odds-on favorite. He's good, too, not a banger like most, but Dean's a wild card and he never smiles, and it makes this good old boy kinda nervous. Still runs out two games, then chokes on the six, and Dean sweeps up the mess, sinks the nine on the snap, and it's all over from there.

"New around here," the guy says when Dean's chalking up for another break.

"Just passing through," Dean tells him coldly.

"Good."

Dean smiles at him, and the guy looks away.

There are people talking while they set up for the final set. Dean hears some of it, doesn't react. He's not really surprised to be here. It's a fucking local tourney, ain't like they're in Vegas or Tahoe playing for a hundred grand on ESPN or something, and he's always been good under pressure. Has to be, he's made a lot of money acting his way through shit, and pool is lots of things but ultimately it's just a game. Dean understands games, plays them every single fucking day, ones that take cues and ones that don't, and so he's solid going on, not rattled by this guy's scary break, sinks three balls and plays with a deadly kind of concentration that matches Dean's own. They don't speak, and the room is artificially quiet, just the balls and the felt and two guys going at it in this civilized version of a duel.

For a while Dean thinks, clinically, he's screwed. His opponent runs it out over and over, and by the time he finally jaws the three Dean's already down four-nothing. But he doesn't think of all that green felt as a proving ground. Just fertile fields, and he takes a deep breath and lets it out and pushes everything else away, not even noticing very much as the balls are racked, the collective sigh when he nails it on the snap again. Just a moment to thank Theodore in long-lost Syracuse, he of the unfiltered Pall Malls and long brown teeth, and hours of playing in a dim cave of a basement hall after Dean sneaked out of their rat-infested apartment house. Theodore taught him that break, showed him how to stop the ball in the middle of the table and let it all unfold, and Dean's taller now and heavier, but he still thinks of his fifteen-year-old self and the taste of the Shirley Temples Pam the bartender used to serve him, and the feel of Theodore's ropy muscular arm over his shoulders when Dean started beating him regularly.

This guy's not a good loser. Dean shakes his hand and doesn't wince when the grip is way too tight, just gives his narrow smile and goes to collect his money. It's enough to see him through a few weeks, since the room's paid for, and he thinks, Ought to go apologize to Sam, and refuses the drinks some of the guys are offering. Thanks, gotta run, it's late, you know how it is.

The guy's waiting by the Impala. Dean sees him with no surprise. So this is how it's gonna be.

Fine. Bring it on.

"Sandy Blackwood says he remembers you from Dallas." The guy isn't making any moves yet. Just staring at him, still poker-faced.

"Could be," Dean says. "What difference does it make?"

"Said he'd beat your face in next time he saw you."

Dean smiles. "He can try. What, you gonna try too?"

For the first time, the guy smiles, and it's not angry. Musing, maybe. "So what's your story, kid?" he asks. He slides his hands into his pockets, and Dean tenses, but nothing else happens. "New in town, what?"

"Checking out the competition?"

"Damn straight."

"Just passing through. Hanging out for a while."

The guy takes cigarettes out of his pocket, and offers Dean one. He takes it, eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You got a hell of an arm, and you don't choke," the guy says, still sounding like he's discussing stock-market trends or something. Calm. "You ever thought about going on the circuit?"

Dean blinks at him. "Like, play for real? No way."

"There's some money in it, if you got the nuts."

"You gonna back me or something, that what you're saying?" Dean snorts, looks away. "Why don't you go yourself? You almost had me back there."

"Think about it." The guy takes a drag off his cigarette and goes for his breast pocket, takes out a card. "Name's Scott Ely."

Dean takes the card but doesn't look at it. "Dean."

"Just Dean, huh."

"Sure."

Ely turns to go, then looks back. "Want some advice?"

Dean just looks at him.

"Don't hustle any games while you're in town. Sandy's spreading the word. You won't find any games, and they'll hurt your hands."

Dean nods, and rolls his eyes a little. "Whatever." He rubs the toe of his boot against his pants leg. "Thanks," he says awkwardly.

Ely shrugs and walks away.

* * *

_TBC._


	5. Chapter 5

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**5.**

His winnings from the tourney mean he really doesn't have to find legit work any time terribly soon. So he isn't quite sure why, on Monday evening, he lets Sam think he got a job. But the pressure in his head is back, strong as ever, and while he watches Sam pick at a congealed tray of hospital food he thinks, There has to be a way. A way to make this dead demon's voice go away, lose its power, something. He's already done his best to make sure it isn't still with him in any tangible form. He isn't possessed, as far as he can tell. But he might as well be, because he can't stop thinking about having no record of his birth, about never hearing stories of his mom pregnant with him. Tons of stories about baby Sammy, but none about baby Dean. Little-kid Dean, sure. But nothing else.

"So did it suck or what?" Sam asks, after pushing the tray away with a look of total disgust.

Dean looks up. "Huh?"

"The job. You look beat."

Dean turns his mouth down. "Of course it sucked, dude. It was WORK."

That gets him a smile, but truth is, his day did suck, and it wasn't because he was doing some shit temp job digging holes or working construction. Instead he spent his day alternately staring at the walls and doing an endless series of pushups and sit-ups and obsessively cleaning his weapons, and wondering just exactly how to proceed. He's tired but he hasn't DONE anything, and the lies are starting to pile up.

Sam's looking like he's picked up on some of that, and he draws a breath, but the door opens and a nurse or tech or something comes in, a pretty one, and there's a bustle of drawing blood and checking Sam's vital signs, so Sam forgets.

Watching, Dean's stomach turns, a fast nauseating twist. Well, there's one option, isn't there? If he can work it. And he can, piece of cake.

The cute nurse chick is talking to Sam, leaning over and taking his pulse. It's easy to palm one of the vials of blood sitting in her tray over by the sink. Dean slips it in his pocket, sees neither of them notice. His heart thumps in his chest, fast and hectic.

After she goes, Dean says, "So when do you get out for real?"

"Week from Friday." Sam sits up, swings his legs over the side.

"You sure you should be doing that?"

"What, getting out? Shit, Dean, it's already –"

"No, I mean. That."

Sam gives him an impatient eye-roll. "I like toilets better than bedpans."

"See your point."

Watching Sam trudge to the bathroom, Dean feels the split inside himself widening. It's good to see Sam walking, even though any bozo can see he's miles away from being as easy on his feet as before the shooting. He's better, though, and one side of Dean is almost tearfully glad to see it.

And the other side, the one gloating over the little glass tube in his pocket, sits back and says, Maybe it's not your responsibility at all, Dean-o. Ever thought about that?

His throat tightens over senseless grief, and he swallows, once, twice, pressing his lips together at the chance that some of it might spill out and make Sam notice. Can Sam read his mind? He's good at seeing the future. What's in Dean's future? If Sam's seen it, he isn't saying. And Dean has no idea if he wants to know.

They watch tv, don't talk much. And the contemplative study is back in Sam's eyes as he watches Dean get ready to go.

"It isn't that late."

Dean gives him a flashy smile. "Some of us gotta work tomorrow."

Sam nods slowly. "Yeah. Okay. You'll be back tomorrow night?"

"Well, lemme check my busy social calendar. Yeah, I think I can pencil you in."

Sam smiles, but he catches Dean's swinging hand, clenches it hard. "Sorry about all this," he says, and his eyes are so earnest and kind Dean feels something unzipping inside himself, all his anger and confusion boiling out until it's all he can do to return the pressure, give a stiff nod.

"Shit happens," he says hoarsely. "Don't worry about it."

He walks fast down the hallway, avoids the elevator and goes to the stairwell. On a beige-painting landing he stands and presses his fists to his mouth, holds back the cry that wants so much to come out. It's going to drive him insane, if he isn't already, and he leans against the wall and closes his eyes and rocks a little, swallowing it until he can take his hands away and not scream out loud.

* * *

What sticks with him is how easy it is to put in motion. He's got Sam's blood, and his own. Doesn't much need anything else, does he? 

It's early when he sets out the next morning, but he hasn't slept anyway, and he's been waiting impatiently for business hours. The building's in the middle of a big office park, twisting roads and not enough street signs, but at ten after eight he's walking into the lobby, his hands so cold he can barely feel the little vial he's been touching like a talisman.

The receptionist looks like she needs another cup or ten of coffee. She gives him an "oh great, it's that time already" look and says, "Can I help you?"

Dean is a little startled that his automatic smile doesn't work. Always does, but this morning his face is frozen. "I was – " He clears his throat. "Wanted to see about getting a test done."

The woman's expression is professionally encouraging. "Which test were you wanting?"

"My brother. And me."

A moment later she hands him paperwork, and Dean stares at the print at the top, siblingship, and wants to weep. "Fill this out, and we'll be with you shortly."

There's no one else in the tidy little foyer. He sits in an uncomfortable chair and fills out the forms, hands them back. And a few minutes later a man pokes his head out, beckons him into a little office.

And really, it's quite simple. Blood isn't even needed, although in the absence of anything else it will do. And all they need from Dean is a few cheek swabs.

"It would be best if we had something from one or both of your parents, as well," the guy tells him, after stowing the samples away. He has a kind face, one that's probably used to comforting expressions.

"They're dead," Dean says, stoic now that it's done. "Don't have anything."

The guy nods. "All right, then. The usual turnover time for these tests is anywhere from two to four weeks. We'll contact you when –"

"Can you do it any faster?" Dean asks.

The man purses his lips, gives a little shrug and a nod. "There's a significantly higher charge for rapid processing."

Dean nods. "How much?"

The figure the man names will take almost all of his winnings. Dean doesn't hesitate. "That'll work."

"Very good."

He pays, and walks outside. It's a pleasant morning, birds singing, puffy white clouds in the blue, blue sky, and Dean shivers in the strong sunlight and makes himself move forward.

* * *

He's broke again, and there's no little sense of irony while he goes to an agency after all, signs up with really good fake documents and nods when the manager asks if he'll do industrial stuff, construction or line work or whatever. Anything. Just need a few bucks, that's all. 

He winds up with factory work, packing crates of tortillas and tamales on the outskirts of town, and two days of that prove the fact that Dean isn't cut out for regular work. Physical labor's one thing; it's the crushing boredom he can't handle. His coworkers all speak Spanish, he can't understand one word in ten, and his back is killing him by the end of the second day. It isn't faked this time when Sam asks if he's tired. He's dead on his feet, and dozes off in the middle of some boring-ass documentary on the hospital tv channel, only waking when Sam nudges him with absurd gentleness and tells him it's nearly eleven o'clock.

"Tortillas?" Sam asks, his face too old with his consternation. "Aw, man, that's all you could get?"

"Not so bad," Dean lies, and shoves his hand in his pocket, looking for his keys. "Sorry about tonight."

"Nah, don't worry." But Sam's eyes are worried. "I just wish you didn't have to do this."

"It'll be all right."

"I wish I could help." Sam's fist thumps down on the mattress. "God damn it, I am so fucking useless."

For a second Dean can't think of anything to say. He's doing what he's always done – taking care of Sammy, run, Dean, take your brother and run – but the split-off other half of him doesn't like it. He thinks about Scott Ely's card in his wallet, about the various ways he could earn money without having to work a conveyor belt in a factory with a bunch of guys jabbering Spanish around him, sweating and earning minimum wage, and his mouth fills with bitterness. Like carrying around a hundred-pound pack on his back, 24/7. Responsibility. Take care of your brother. Maybe it was never his duty to begin with.

"Chill," he tells Sam, pats his arm mechanically. "Pretty soon you'll be outta here. And believe me, I ain't working in a tortilla factory forever."

He doesn't go to work the next morning. Drinks coffee in a café and thinks about the skinny stack of cash in his wallet, doesn't think about where the rest of it went. Or the five days of limbo that stretch out in front of him, every tick of the clock like another nail in the coffin of his deepest beliefs. He should do things. Things like maybe steal some money. Or look for some other job, only it'll just be shit, too, guys like him don't get hired for the cushy office work. Sam would. Sam would look all shiny and squeaky-clean and cute, and they'd snap him up in a heartbeat. But Dean's just not wired the same way, never was, and now he tries not to think of maybe the reason for that, the real reason.

He stiffs the waitress's tip because he can't afford to drop anything more than a buck, but what the hell, it's a goddamn single cup of coffee, isn't like she could have expected much anyway.

That afternoon he calls Scott Ely, and at ten that night he slips away from the hospital -- that old work excuse sure comes in handy – and drives to a tiny bar on East 39th Street.

Ely buys them a pitcher, and Dean wolfs down bar snacks, familiarly greasy and the only kind of food that sounds good to him anymore. Ely watches him, and says, "So what's your story, Dean No-Last-Name?"

Dean eats a tortilla chip and shrugs. "What's yours?"

"I'm going to Reno this weekend. Business. You should come."

Dean swallows icy beer, wiping his mouth on a tiny paper napkin. "What's in Reno? Tournament or something?"

Ely shakes his head slowly. "Money. Lots of it."

"I'm listening."

Ely's voice is smooth, crisp as new twenties straight out of the drawer. "I'll back you. Seventy-thirty. You'll play first night at a place I know. Downtown."

Dean pushes the food around on his plate, licks ketchup off his finger. Salt tastes good; maybe he's dehydrated or something. "Not tournaments, then."

"Nothing new to you. Or am I wrong?"

"Why take the chance? You got money to burn or something?"

Ely smiles. "It's fun. Isn't that why you do it?"

Dean doesn't smile back. "No," he says simply. "It's not."

"But it is fun. Isn't it?"

"I dunno, sometimes." Dean shifts, looks at the dark window. "Look, I got – things, dude, I got somebody in the hospital, and I can't just walk away –"

"This person dying?"

Dean looks back reluctantly. "No."

"Two nights. The money will be good, Dean, if you can do what I think you can."

He thinks about Sam stuck in that godforsaken hospital, thinks about the bills he's racking up at the motel and how once Sam gets out it'll be worse, hoping they can get away from here before they gotta pay all of it, and he supposes that's why he nods. "How good?" he asks.

Ely's still smiling. "Good enough," he says.

* * *

_TBC._


	6. Chapter 6

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**6.**

Reno's hot and dry and somehow depressing, but the second night he plays in a private hall where the drinks are free and the atmosphere is as thick and crushing as diving 2,000 feet underwater, and Dean welcomes the buzz of adrenaline, the flat dark eyes of his opponents. He walks away with Scott Ely quite a bit richer, and when Ely invites Dean for a drink, he says no. Ought to celebrate, but he just feels tired now.

In his own room he calls Sam, just to check in.

"You didn't get beat up, did you?" Sam asks.

Dean laughs a little, and shakes his head. "Nah. Kinda fun, really."

"How much did you win?"

"Enough that if I never see another fucking tortilla again it'll be too soon, man."

Sam's laugh is relieved. "So get your ass back here, okay? I'm so stir-crazy I think the nurses are drawing straws or something so they don't have to come in here."

"Just a few more days and you're sprung. Not that long."

"Thank GOD."

Dean smiles. "Be there tomorrow, Sammy."

"Counting on it."

He hangs up, and thinks, Tomorrow is Monday. Monday.

He sleeps a little, and the rest of the night he listens to the quiet hiss of the air conditioner, the muffled thump of footfalls in the hallway and feels cool crisp sheets against his skin, and thinks about the harpy he killed when he was twelve. The werewolf at thirteen, the mazukin, the zombies, the yeti that kept bleeding and wouldn't fucking DIE when he was fourteen. The vampire when he was sixteen, and the girl he'd fucked two nights later, feeling her cool skin under his fingers and wondering if he could come because instead of her pretty high-school face he saw the wooden stake protruding from her bright blue eye.

He has seen himself as a knight-errant, a paladin, righting wrongs, vanquishing demons, but the images seem faked to him now, bad Photoshopping, laughable really. It's his father's quest, not his, and Dean is a hollow imitation, a kid wearing his dad's clothes and shoes, trying to pass. Sam had it right. Sam saw the falsity of it, the fruitlessness, even when they were kids. It's been Dean, all along, who bought it hook, line, and sinker.

He stares at the dim light on the ceiling, hears a woman's low laughter outside and a man's answering indistinct words, and closes his dry eyes.

The drive back is boring and long, Ely jabbering nonstop on his sleek little cell phone, setting up another gig someplace. Dean doesn't think he'll be there, but doesn't bother telling Scott that. If he thinks Dean's trustworthy, he deserves whatever he gets.

He drops Ely at his car and nods when he says he'll call. He will, Dean's sure of it, nice pickings this trip and more where it came from, and yes, it would be one way to make a living for a while. But he's no longer interested in pool. It's just a means to an end, one he'll exploit if he needs to but doesn't give a rat's ass about otherwise.

He changes clothes at the motel, pays the manager another week's worth, and drives to the lab. It's a different guy this time, but the expression's the same, cautious and calm, and Dean listens with acute interest.

"We determine siblingship by calculating an index of genetic variations." The guy taps the folder in front of him, laces his fingers together. "We also did Y-paternal testing, since mitochondrial DNA testing requires material from the mother, and that was not available."

Dean nods. He feels calmer than he expected. Easier.

"Your index of variation between yourself and the sample you provided turned up below 1.0. It's not 100 conclusive, but it's very solid evidence."

He looks at Dean, and Dean says, "Okay."

The man pulls out another sheet of paper. "The Y chromosome passes from father to son fairly unchanged, even for a number of generations. The Y chromosomes in the samples we tested were comprised of different genetic markers. Again, with a margin for error. But this particular test will stand up in court, if you need." He raises his eyebrows.

"Nah," Dean says. "Don't think that'll happen."

"Based on these two tests, I think we can say pretty definitively that this person is not a blood relation."

"Yeah."

There's a little more. But finally the guy hands him the papers, and Dean's walking away, out the door.

* * *

Sam's expression when Dean walks in late that night is one he hates. Determined, focused. 

"We gotta talk," he says without preamble.

Dean sits down in the nearby chair, wishing for a cigarette. He cut back, and now he's hooked again, monkey once more on his back. "You got way too much time on your hands," he says tiredly. "Need a distraction."

"Was it really enough? The money?"

Dean faces him squarely. "Don't worry about it. Hey, how you feeling?"

Sam gives an impatient blink. "Bored and ready to leave," he says. "Same as every day. Dean –"

"I said don't sweat it," Dean interrupts, feeling his face tightening with fast, too-fast anger. "Relax. We're flush." He stares at Sam, knowing he shouldn't, unable to stop. How'd he ever believe they were brothers? They look nothing alike. Sam's got Dad written all over him. Dark eyes, heavier beard than Dean, that mouth. Just a little blurred with Mom's DNA. But Dean's never looked like any of them. Wrong eyes, wrong lips, wrong build. He's been so goddamn blind.

Sam's hand closes on Dean's wrist, cold and startling. "Start talking, Dean," he says tightly, "or so help me, I'll –"

"What?" Dean snaps. "Come after me? Like to see that, bro."

Sam's earnest eyes narrow. "What is up with you? Jesus, you're so – hostile."

Dean doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, and the hell of it is, he can see Sam knowing that. Like touching gives Sam's Spidey senses another way into him, burrowing in and peeking at the inside of his brain, and Dean yanks his hand back with a swallow of automatic revulsion. "I know what you're doing," he says thickly. "And you can fuck off. Go – bend a spoon or some shit. Don't try that with me."

"Try what?" Sam's look is honestly bewildered. "I'm not TRYING anything. What, you think I can read your MIND or something?" He snorts, sags back in the bed. "Believe me, I wish I could sometimes. Maybe then I'd actually understand you."

"Well," Dean jeers, wishing he could shut up and feeling himself unable to, "guess you're down here with the rest of us, then, huh? Just have to make do with no superpowers at all. Sucks, doesn't it?"

Sam doesn't rise to the bait. His eyes are wary, and hurt, and above all confused. "You – changed," he says softly. "Something happened. Please, Dean, will you please just tell me?"

"Stop using that – Psych 101 bullshit on me. Okay? If I wanna talk, I'll talk, but right now just leave me the fuck ALONE."

By the end of it he's yelling, and he hears his words bounce off the walls, knows he's a millimeter from completely losing it, and he stands fast, fights down a wave of dizziness and says, "I gotta go."

"Dean." Sam's pale as the sheets he's lying on. "My dream –"

"FUCK your fucking dreams," Dean spits. "You want to know how sick I am of hearing about that shit? 'Dean, I dreamed about this, we gotta do what I say.' Over and over and OVER again! They're YOUR dreams, Sam! I'm not your – interpreter! Just – deal with it!"

Sam looks away, and some dark, horrible part of Dean cackles with glee, seeing the anger, the red spots high on Sam's pale cheeks, the big hands clenching into the blanket. "So go," Sam says, with that tight control Dean envies, and hates. "Get out, Dean."

"My pleasure," Dean tells him, but it isn't, even before he gets to the door, he's bleeding, can't Sam SEE that? All those visions and shit, can't he see THIS? Except of course he can't, he has no more idea of it than Dean did, Dad never told either of them, and they've lived their entire lives thinking they knew what was what and Sam still thinks it.

But he's boiling, he's almost stumbling with this hot black rage inside him, ichor bubbling instead of blood, and he's down the hall and pounding down the stairs, teeth clenched so hard he can hear enamel squeaking. And he can't tell who he's mad at, if it's Sam, for being real, for not having to find out he's not who he thinks he is, or Dad for not ever telling him the truth, or MOM for dying and letting him believe for twenty-two YEARS that she loved him, that he was really hers and not some stranger's cast-off runt.

He drives badly, blindly, and doesn't remember getting to the motel. There's his room, and his stuff all scattered around, goddamn lousy housekeeper without Sam around to call him on it, and Dean stands in the middle of the room with his hands pressed against his face, because if he can hold tightly enough he won't simply fly apart with the force of this anger, this rage, screaming inside his head.

He coughs a sound that's bestial, that isn't anger or grief or anything really even human, and takes Dad's journal and flings it across the room. It splits open against the wall, sending papers spiraling through the air, fluttering to the floor, and Dean grins through his tears and strides over, falling to his knees and grasping the pages, crumpling them with his fists.

* * *

_TBC_


	7. Chapter 7

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**7.**

The phone drags him out of a sodden, dreamless sleep, and it takes him a moment to focus enough to flip it open and answer.

"You scared the shit out of me," Sam says on the other line. "Where the hell have you been?"

Dean blinks heavily, stares at his watch. It's nearly seven, and from the angle of the light pushing at the window it's not AM, it's PM. "Here," he says after a moment. "Asleep."

"I've left you about forty voice mails. Damn it, Dean, don't DO this to me."

"Do what?" His brain is foggy, and he frowns as he sits up. "What'd I do?"

Sam snorts. "Completely freak your shit last night? That ring a bell?"

Dean doesn't answer for a moment, staring around the motel room. It's completely and utterly trashed, and not because he doesn't pick up after himself. Bedside lamp smashed, table overturned, even the goddamn chair's in at least three pieces. He's been sleeping on a bare mattress; the sheets are every which way, ripped in shreds. And over it all, tiny pieces of paper, like confetti. The remnants of a parade or something.

And he doesn't remember doing it. It slams into him with all the power of a yeti on speed: he flipped, fugued right the fuck out, and that was after losing it in front of Sam, and THAT was after –

Dean swallows. "Yeah, kinda," he says hoarsely. "Sorry about that."

"Dean, I know you're not all right. Okay? I know there's something going on, something big, and I'm not sitting on my ASS while you – whatever it is you're doing. Where are you staying?"

Dean swings his legs over the side of the bed, stepping gingerly over splintered fake wood. "Dude, it's not –"

"Just tell me."

He finds one boot – he's still fully dressed except for that – and upends it, sees a few pieces of confetti-paper drift out. "Skyland Motel. Why?"

"I'll be there after a while."

Dean sits back down, hard. "What? Hey, wait – no, you won't."

"Yes. I will." He can practically hear Sam's teeth grinding over the phone. "I'm checking myself out. What, you think you're the only one who can do that?"

"You are NOT doing that, Sammy, you keep your ass right where it –"

"My ass," Sam says furiously, "is wherever the hell it needs to be, and right now that is not HERE. Shut up, Dean, I've already got the paperwork."

"No. No, don't you –"

But he's talking to air. There's a scrap of paper on the sole of his foot. He can make out his father's writing on it. "—ean." His name. Part of it. He scrubs the bit of paper off his skin and shudders all over.

* * *

Good thing the hospital's close. He parks in a handicapped spot, fuck it, and storms into the building, and a security guard gives him an unsmiling once-over while he strides to the elevators. Upstairs, it smells like bad cafeteria food, and he skids a little at Sam's doorway. 

Sam, who's dressed and arguing with a gray-haired guy who has to be a doctor.

"I'm fully aware of my responsibilities," Sam snaps, sounding as cold and crisp as Dean has ever heard him. "It's my choice to leave. End of story."

"And I strenuously urge you to reconsider that stance," says the doctor, not nearly as cool. "Mr. Martinez, this is –"

"Stupid," Dean says from the doorway. "Really stupid."

Both of them look at him, the doc with relief, Sam with nothing so easily defined. Sam lifts his chin. "It isn't your decision, either," he says. "It's mine. Done deal."

Dean swallows and shakes his head. "Don't be a dumbass, Sam," he says thickly. "Stay and finish getting well. Don't wor –"

"Don't WORRY?" Sam isn't completely steady on his feet, but he's made a lot of progress, and now he tips his head back and laughs harshly, and Dean shivers a little, hearing that wintry sound. "Newsflash, man: It's too late for that old line. WAY too late."

And although Dean would like to think it isn't, it's over already. Going up against Sam when he's like this is just like flinging himself against a solid brick wall: he's made up his mind, and all Dean will do is bloody himself on the battlements. So he sits in stony silence while Sam signs innumerable forms, stuffs his few things in the clear plastic bag provided by the hospital, adjusts his cane.

Finally he glances at Dean. First time since that brief conversation upon Dean's arrival. "So let's go."

Dean opens his mouth to say something, not sure what, and then just raises his open hands. "Whatever."

The hospital's provided a wheelchair, a flustered nurse giving Sam a beseeching look, but he lumbers right on past both, chair and woman, heading for the elevators, and Dean follows, hunched inside his jacket like it'll protect him from whatever righteous fury Sam chooses to rain down on him. He's seen Sam pissed off before, way more than once, and this is like the worst of those times, like the terrible night before Sam left for Stanford, or the fight between Sam and their dad, a couple of months before that. In all their time as – brothers or whatever they really are, Dean's never had that anger turned all the way on himself. Most of the way; he's got the scars to prove it. But not completely. Now, skulking in the corner of the elevator while Sam stabs his finger against the lobby call button, he feels trapped by it, suffocated.

He doesn't try to help Sam out to the car. Afraid that in this frame of mind, Sam will deck him, cane or no cane. Opens the door for him, though, and walks slowly to slide behind the wheel.

"Want something to eat bef –"

"Just drive. The hell away from here."

He does it, driving more carefully than the last few trips, and when they get to the motel he looks over and says, "I gotta get you a room. Mine's trashed."

Sam doesn't look at him. "That's fine."

He gets the key, room's a few doors down from his own, and lets them inside. And the minute the door closes Sam says, "Tell me. All of it."

"Dude –"

"Right now, Dean."

Meeting that fierce gaze, Dean feels abysmally tired, worn to the bone, and he shrugs and slings himself into the single chair. "Aw, Sam, it's just shit, that's all."

Sam sits on the edge of the near bed, and Dean can see new lines of strain, maybe pain, etched around his mouth. "What kind of shit? Tell me."

The table feels slightly sticky under his fingers. He looks away, sees the sunset coloring the curtains from behind. "I can't," he whispers.

"Bullshit. You mean you won't."

"Potato, potahto," Dean says, and it's invigorating, allows him to look at Sam squarely. "It's none of your business," he tells Sam evenly. "I'm handling it." And after he says it he wonders, because his room would seem to suggest his coping skills are questionable at best, but what the fuck.

Sam nods slowly. "I've seen you go…through so much," he says after a very long moment. "All the shit while we were growing up. All the monsters, the blood, all of that. But I've never seen you do that last night. Never come close," he says with absolute confidence. "You LOST it last night. I gotta know why. You have to tell me, or –"

"Or what?" asks Dean harshly. "You'll walk? That ain't exactly a new and refreshing response, Sammy; try again."

"No, I'll go you one better," is the instant, hot rejoinder. "I'll stick to you so tight you'll forget we aren't conjoined twins. I will be in your face 24/7. How's that? That new and improved enough for you?"

Dean swallows. "You can't keep up with me. In case you hadn't noticed, you're still walking with a CANE." He clears his throat gruffly. "And you look like hell, dude." He tries for a smile, feels it failing. "Want some Advil or something?"

Sam's eyes are suddenly shimmering with tears, and Dean jerks his head away, glaring back at the orange curtains. "I've been trying to figure out what it might be," Sam says, sounding twelve and terrified, a sound that grips Dean's belly, calls out to some deep part of him that wants to move, put his arms around that child and comfort him the best he can. Try to be the dad neither of them ever really had, and all the while knowing he was a piss-poor substitute.

"But I can't. I can't – see what it is. It scares me so bad I can barely think. It feels like you're – not even THERE anymore, and I never thought –"

Dean isn't watching, has his eyes tightly closed now, but he can feel what Sam's doing anyway, that ferocious struggle for control, mastering the emotions that always did run closer to the surface than Dean's ever had. "All that time in California, after I left," Sam says in his broken voice, "I never felt, once, like you weren't actually there. I never saw you, never talked to you, but I never had a single moment when I thought, Dean's not HERE anymore. And now I do. You're here but you're not HERE. Where are you?"

In spite of the evidence in that room down the hall, in spite of the whispering thin memory of that demon in his mind's ear, he cannot hear that voice without responding. It's ingrained in him, stronger than blood or conditioning or his father's – not-father's – goading words, and he gets up and sits next to Sam and pulls him close, because he can't do anything but that. Will perhaps never be able to not do it, no matter what he learns.

"Right here," Dean whispers, pulling Sam's head against his shoulder and stroking the hot damp mass of his hair with shaking fingers. "I'm right here, Sammy, I got you."

Sam's hands grip his shirt, pull with strength Dean remembers from too long ago, the cruel clarity of illumination like a blow to the solar plexus, taking his breath away. Take your brother outside as fast as you can. Don't look back. And he didn't, and he hasn't, and it has cost him everything.

Sam's embrace becomes tears, and Dean is crying too, a little, eyes stinging, murmuring the old familiar platitudes, the ones that worked not because of what was said but how he said it, so many times when Dad was nowhere to be found and it fell to Dean to do this, learning as he went, until it was as natural as breathing for him, for both of them.

"It'll be all right, Sammy," Dean says, and wonders if it can ever be again.

* * *

"It was the demon, that night. It told me things." 

They're both still sitting on the bed, although a few inches apart now, cross-legged with their knees nearly touching. Sam's face is still red with emotion, and his eyes are puffy, but he's calm enough, facing Dean with every impression of focus.

"I knew it," Sam breathes. "It started then. I thought -- I thought it had to do with me, maybe, but I was starting to see this was something else. Didn't know what, but –" He frowns. "What did it say to you?"

"Not that much. Just a few words."

"And those were…?"

Dean shakes his head slowly. "I can't tell you."

Sam draws back. "Oh, man, don't –"

"No. I'm serious." Dean watches him, licks his lips carefully. "I won't. Not until –"

"What? Until what?"

"Until I figure out what I need to do."

He can hear Sam swallow, the flicker of fear and worry in his dark eyes. "I don't think I'm gonna like what that is," he says unsteadily.

Dean lowers his head, purses his lips a little. "Maybe not. But you gotta let me do this my own way, okay? You said, back there before we saw Dad, the daeva thing – You told me, I gotta let you go your own way. So you do the same, all right? I gotta figure this out on my own." He shifts, lets his knee bump Sam's. "Okay?"

"If Dad were here, would you tell him?"

"Nope." Sam gives him a familiar, disbelieving look, and Dean shakes his head. "Look, I'm about to start eating the table over there. Lemme go get us some food, all right? You hungry?"

"After weeks in a hospital? You're being facetious, right?"

"If that means what I think it means, yeah." Dean reaches out and rubs his knuckle against Sam's skull, old mannerism he'd dropped when Sam got tall enough to make him have to reach. Now it feels bittersweet, like a goodbye to old worn-out things. "Any preferences?"

Sam's reaching up to pat his hair down again, but his eyes are bright with sadness and his smile is wavery. "I wouldn't even bitch about grease right now, honestly."

"Good, because it's pretty sure to be on the menu."

He grabs his keys and puts on his jacket, and when he touches the doorknob Sam says, "You're coming back. Right?"

Dean turns and makes a face. "At this rate I'm not leaving at all, dude."

"Say it." There is a peculiar intensity to Sam's gaze, something that banishes their childhood and yanks Dean once more into the headlong realization that Sam isn't a kid anymore, isn't Sammy but SAM, and Dean makes himself nod.

"Yeah, Sam," he says softly. "I'm coming back."

"And next time?"

"Every time I can, man." He waits, and turns the knob. "Back in a few."

Sam nods. "I'll be waiting."

* * *

_TBC._


	8. Chapter 8

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**8.**

No matter how restless Sam is, and that's very restless, they can't go anywhere. Not yet. It's partly Sam's body, weakened from too much bed rest and too much recent trauma, but it's Dean, too.

"You look like shit," Sam tells him over the coffee Dean brings over the next morning. Sam himself is no poster child for overall wellness, but his eyes are clear, studying Dean with alarming acuity. "Didn't sleep?"

"I'm all right." Dean shrugs and swigs coffee. "Listen, I gotta run a few errands today. You're all right, all set, got what you need?"

Sam places his cup carefully on the table and crosses his arms over his chest. "I'm going with you."

"No, you're not."

"I meant what I said. Glue." A muscle in Sam's jaw twitches. "Got it?"

Dean draws a deep breath, and decides, Screw it. He knows your weak spots; works both ways. "So that bit about how I gotta let you do your thing -- That only works when it's what you want, huh? Not when I want something? Nice little double standard you got going there, dude."

He sees in the flicker of Sam's gaze, the way it hits home. Guilt, like a glaze of darkness over that bright gaze. "It's not like that," Sam says, but he's fighting not to squirm.

"No, Sam, it's exactly like that." Dean leans forward, keeps the sneer out of his voice with difficulty. "You want me to let you just walk away when you decide to? Then give me the same space." It's harder to speak than he's thought it would be, and he clears his throat. "I'm just doing a little research, that's all. I know you're the uber-geek from hell, but I still know how to operate a computer, read a few articles."

"Let me help," Sam urges, and Dean shakes his head.

"Don't need it, man. Need you to get better. That's it, that's all. Your job for the day."

"Dean, you fucker –"

"And then," Dean says evenly, "okay? And then, we'll talk. Later."

Sam's eyes widen a little, and he gives a nod. "All right. Fair enough."

He isn't expecting to get off the hook so fast, and it takes him a second to nod, make himself smile. "All right then," Dean says evenly. "Back later, Sammy."

"Sam, God damn it."

Dean's smile twitches. "Language."

"Asshole."

"Dickhead."

* * *

It feels…good to have Sam back with him. Good, in a dangerous sort of way, a fragile way. Dean's insides are made of glass, glass that's been shattered and repaired with masking tape and crossed fingers, and outside, driving, he feels it all shaking under the strain. He can think about Sam without wanting to break something on the outside, too. It isn't easy, maybe won't be easy for a long time, but he can do it. But there is so much more, and even considering it all overwhelms him, makes him feel like pulling over and crawling into the back seat and curling up into a protective ball. 

He's been in a hell of a lot of libraries in his life. Can practically map the US of A by which library's where, how good the internet connections are, the reference sections, local history publications. This one, he's been in lots more than once, and he goes directly to the computers, remembers what he's here to do.

Half an hour later, printouts stuffed into his inner jacket pocket, he heads out again. Sam picks up after a single ring of the phone, sounding alarmed.

"Hey," Dean says. "I gotta do some driving. You need anything?"

"Driving where?"

"Topeka, gotta check something out."

"Topeka?" Sam sounds bewildered, and it sends a dull, senseless ache through Dean's belly to know he can see Sam's face as he says the words. "What the hell is in Topeka?"

Answers, Dean thinks, I hope. Aloud he says, "Not sure yet. Maybe nothing. Just wanted to let you know, I'll be out of pocket for a few hours."

"Dean, what aren't you telling me?"

"Later, dude," Dean says with a breeziness that feels as artificial as it sounds. "Gotta go. Call me if, you know."

There's nothing, and then Sam says, "Yeah. Likewise."

Traffic's not so bad today. He makes Topeka in way under an hour, and the office he needs before noon.

It almost feels like a hunt. It IS a hunt, kinda, if he can just make himself think of it that way. He smiles at the clerk, and says, "I need to look up adoption records."

She raises her eyebrows. "You have a court order, sir?"

"No. No, it's for me. I –" He pauses, collects himself. "I'm – the adopted one. Adoptee." He's never said it aloud. It tastes funny on his tongue.

"Sir, you'll need to fill out some forms, and then we'll need some processing time."

He swallows. "But I thought they were open records in Kansas."

"They are," the clerk says, and gazes at him for a moment before pressing her lips together and adding, "It takes some time to look them up, that's all."

Dean nods, and says, "I can wait. I got – nowhere else to be."

"Sir, it could take hours –"

She breaks off, looking distressed, and that's when Dean realizes he's crying. Not a lot, but enough that he's freaked out the lady he's trying to get help from, and that's not even what freaks HIM out but the sheer fact of tears, Dean Winchester or whoever the fuck he really is, who never fucking cries, not in public for damn sure.

He refuses to wipe his face, acknowledge that there's wetness on his cheeks. "Sorry," he says woodenly. "It – would help if I could get that information soon."

The woman's alarm has faded to concern, and she nods slowly. "I do understand," and he wants to feel that she does, maybe a little. He could sure use it. "Okay, here's what we'll do. Fill out the forms, and I'll see what I can do." She hesitates, holding out the papers. "It'll still be a while. You have time to go – do other things, if you need to."

He nods jerkily. "Thanks." His throat hurts so bad. "I appreciate it."

"No problem, sir."

It takes a while to fill out all the paper, and then he's cut loose, at least until the afternoon. Nothing to do, he wasn't lying about that, and he could go grab some lunch or whatever, but he's never been farther from hungry, and so he sits in a hard chair in the lobby for a while, stares at people coming and going.

After an hour, he goes outside and walks down the street until he finds a park, postage-stamp sized but the shade works, little bench he doesn't have to share with anyone for the moment, and he lets some more time go by. Thinks about calling Sam, for the hell of it, and opens his phone and sees Dad's speed-dial entry.

Just looking at it makes a little sound escape his throat, a thin wheeze of helpless pain. This is not his father. This man, larger than life for so many years, all the time Dean can remember, is no relation at all. Just a guy, maybe a good guy because whoever Dean's real folks are, real mother and real father, evidently they didn't want him too much, and there were John and Mary Winchester, of Lawrence, Kansas, ready to step up to the plate and take this stray kid off the market.

Except he can't feel grateful, and knowing why doesn't change it, doesn't lessen the raw ripping agony of finding it all out as he has. None of it's been real. Not the fighting, the struggle, the desperation of the life he's known – none of it's been HIS. It's been someone else's fight, someone else's grief. Someone else's retribution. Mary Winchester was never his mother, and the bearded guy Dean called a few months ago begging for help wasn't his father, never has been his father. A substitute, like Dean himself in poor Sammy's eyes, not the real thing at all but just a pinch hitter.

He sits on a warm park bench in downtown Topeka, Kansas, and pulls his knees to his chest, rocks in place, and waits.

* * *

It's nearly four by the time he gets the papers. He wants to tip the clerk, thank her in some tangible way, but she doesn't seem to need it. Just pats his hand, a motherly gesture that brings tired tears to his eyes, and says, "I hope that helps, honey." 

He nods. "Maybe so."

He sits in the lobby to look at what she's found for him. It's a jabber of legalese, mostly, and he wishes sharply for Sam to translate it for him. But Sam isn't here, and he'll just have to parse it through on his own.

One thing jumps out at him almost immediately. He can see why there are no newborn photos of him in the scant surviving stack of family snapshots. He was nearly four months old when his mom and dad went before a judge and made it all official. Four months, still a baby but not that new. Four months when he was what? In foster care? Some kind of faceless state agency? The papers don't say.

His grief steps back while he reads. In its place is something new, something he doesn't recognize even in all the years of training, all the countless exercises and chases and fact-finding expeditions. He is cold, and tired, but this sort of calm braces him, lets him stare at the last few pages with chilly focus.

His mother is not listed. And, as he keeps reading, he notices something else.

It's nearly quitting time, and the nice clerk looks surprised to see him back. "I just – had a quick question," Dean says.

"I'll help if I can."

He holds out the paper, indicating the paragraphs in question. "Isn't this where the – my real mother's name should go? If she gave me up for adoption?"

The woman scans the page, frowns a little. "Normally, yes."

"There's no one listed."

She purses her lips, and looks up at him. "That could mean several things. Her name might have been expunged because she was a minor at the time of your birth."

Dean nods. "Or?"

"Or." The clerk raises her eyebrows. "It's possible your mother was unknown."

"Which means – what?"

"I honestly don't know. In general, I mean -- Abandoned children may never know who their birth mother was. It could have been a CPS case, and –" She flips busily through the pages, finally nods. "You were a state ward at the time of your adoption. That might be it."

"So – how do I find out?"

She gives him another gentle look. "It can be very difficult to find out birth mothers' names in some cases."

Dean gives a stiff nod. "So I'm kinda screwed, that what you're saying?"

"Not necessarily. But it could be a long search, yes."

"Yeah. Thanks," Dean says faintly, turning away.

"For what it's worth." The clerk leans forward, putting her elbows on the counter. "There are services that help you track down adoptees' birth mothers. Even fathers, sometimes. You could hire one of those. See what happens."

Dean looks at her, and her kindly look fades into vague surprise. "That's all right," Dean says after a moment. "I think I can handle that part myself."

His hands aren't shaking when he refolds the papers, puts them away. When he walks out of the office, his earlier tears don't show at all.

* * *

It's late, and it's instinct to grab something to eat when he gets back to K.C., haul it back to the motel. Sam's sitting in the chair by the window, and Dean wonders how often he's looked out, waiting for Dean to get back. The guilt associated with that thought is faint, and unimportant. 

"Chow time," Dean announces, putting the bags of take-out on the table. "Hope you're hungry."

Sam doesn't touch the food yet. Just stares at him. "Man, you were gone forever. Where'd you go?"

Dean shrugs and opens one of the bags, taking out Styrofoam containers. "Like I said, dude, had to run some errands."

"Must have been some errand."

"Yeah. I got Mexican, that all right?"

"Dean –"

"Come on. Eat before it gets cold. It's good, I've got food from here before."

They eat in silence, and Dean is glad of the reprieve. It's too much to encompass all at once, what he's found. He's adopted; it's official. That part he can wrap his head around; not easily, but yeah.

But the rest is crowding his brain, jostling for space, the newest of all the new shit he's had to adjust to the past few weeks. It ought to make him feel better: Dad and Mom were the good guys, the ones who DID want him, as opposed to his real mother, who clearly didn't. There's some irony, because wasn't CPS one of Dad's major fears, while they were growing up? Always scared some do-gooder social worker would see something they weren't supposed to, get a court order and take Dean and Sammy away, leave John without his little built-in army of two?

And that isn't the biggest irony, nossir. The biggest is the one that sits now in Dean's throat, making it hard to swallow his enchiladas. The irony of the good son as the fake son, the rebel as the real son. It's always, always been Dean who threw himself 110 into Dad's version of reality. Dean's been the spear-carrier, the devoted son and warrior, the unquestioning acolyte. Sam's the one who questions, considers, objects. A few times over the years, Dean's wondered at that. How they could be brothers, and so fundamentally different, wired so opposite. Now he knows, and it's not the answer he ever saw coming. Hell, if he'd considered it, he'd have sworn it was Sam who was the outsider, the changeling in the crib. Sam's the one who didn't fit in with their tight little band. Not Dean. Dean always fit in. Dean's one goal in LIFE was to fit the image of what their dad needed him to be.

He shoves the container away with his food half-uneaten, grease thick and nasty on his tongue. Sam, he sees, really was hungry, and his food is all gone.

"You ready to talk?" Sam asks levelly, and Dean meets his eyes and thinks, Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"What do you want me to say, Sammy?" he asks instead.

Sam ignores the nickname, plunges on. "The truth, Dean. What happened back there? What did it tell you?"

Dean doesn't have to ask what "it" is.

"Because if you believe it, you're –" Dumber than you look, Dean expects him to say it, but he doesn't. Just shakes his head, little disbelieving twist. "You know better than that," Sam says honestly.

"Demons lie," Dean says, when he can't think of anything else to say. Except this one didn't. Demons do what they can to hurt you, it's their sole purpose in existence, hurting, and this one chose the thing Dean fears the most because it didn't have to make anything up. There was a lot to choose from. It was easy.

"Yeah. They do. What did it tell you?"

"I –" Dean stops.

Sam's expression crumples, becomes something Dean hates to see, fears to see. "Please," Sam whispers. "Let me in, okay? Just this once? Just – drop all this big-brother stuff and let me IN?"

He thinks it might have worked. Might have. But hearing the word from Sam's lips is like his own knife, thrust deep and with skill directly into his chest, and he jerks back, unable for a second to even breathe, the pain is so sharp. He is not Sam's brother, he is not John's son, and he does not know who he is, only who he isn't. There are enormous gaping holes in the once-solid floor in his mind, treacherous gaps he's already spent all his energy climbing back out of, and now he stumbles again, reels and can't catch himself this time.

"What?" Sam snaps, eyes so wide there is a complete circle of white around the irises. "What is it?"

It is not his fight. It never was. He doesn't belong here. Nothing is as it appears. Nothing at all.

"I'm sorry," Dean says, backing away. "But."

There's horror on Sam's too-readable face, no understanding except that. He reaches out, and Dean knows his hands will be cold, shaking, because Dean is not supposed to look like this, act like this, he's the older one, the one with the savvy and the grit and the convictions.

"I'm not ready," Dean says, and Sam lets him get to the door before saying, "Would you tell Dad? If he were here?"

Dean spins, suddenly furious, and horror becomes shock in Sam's eyes. "Don't you call him," Dean snaps. "Don't you dare."

"Why?" Sam asks softly. "Is it because you're scared of him? Or because he already knows? Is that an order?"

Everything I say is a lie. Dean stands very still, anger boiling in his throat

Sam gasps something that sounds like a sob and shakes his head. "Don't do this. Whatever – it is, I can see it in your eyes, don't DO it."

"Get some sleep," Dean says. "You gotta get better, remember?"

Sam watches him wordlessly, eyes starry with tears and love and anger, and Dean turns the knob and goes out.

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**9.**

He doesn't sleep. He doesn't even feel tired. His body is thrumming with restless, angry energy, and he tries to think about Sam, about responsibility, but it's John Winchester's face he sees, his warm smile and cool eyes, and Dean paces his tiny room, pushing the broken furniture to the side and wading through the little piles of paper that a month ago were treasured like the Grail, his only tangible connection to his father. That trail of cryptic breadcrumbs, leading Dean and Sam into the dark woods, hunting as they had been taught since childhood. Hunting, hunting, it's all Dean has ever done, literally, all he has ever known or considered.

His mouth is dry, his eyes blurring. It isn't that he hasn't been able to see it before: the monstrosity that was their growing-up, the skewed reality, the fear and running and fighting, oh God, the hunts. But now, as clearly as anything in his weird-ass life, he can see that it wasn't fair, they HAD no childhood, only this, and what kind of sick fuck would do that to his kids anyway?

Take your brother. Don't look back.

There is a flavor like old, rancid smoke on his tongue. This is not his life, this is someone else's. Sam's, yes, but not his. He abjures this life, rejects it out of hand. Not his, never his, he was the stunt double, the hired hand, the protector. He stands still, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, over and over again while he feels the realization trickling over him like ice-cold blood, thick and sluggish. Expendable. He's expendable. Sam is the real son. Dean's the fake, the pretender. Has this been what it was about all along? Sam's gifts, Sam's freaky premonitions and don't forget, moved some furniture with his brain while he was at it. Is that the secret John Winchester really never wanted Dean to know?

Rage tastes like burned flesh. He swallows and wants to vomit. All he is – all he has ever been – is a tool for his father to use. His father who is nothing like a father at all, his father who he loathes now with the passion he has once reserved for a faceless demon that took Mary from them all, that has eaten up a mother (not a mother, Sam's, not his) and an innocent girl (Sam's, not his) and their childhood, their lives. His father, who let Sam have his freedom but could never allow Dean the same, tying him tighter and tighter with each passing year until he knew, he KNEW, that Dean could never get free, never be anything but what John needed him to be, there for when he was required.

"Fuck you," Dean says out loud, staring at the window and seeing nothing but flames, and John Winchester's laughing, calculating face. "You don't OWN me. You're nothing. Nothing."

I abjure you, you manipulating son of a bitch. I fucking abjure your lying ass.

* * *

By morning he's got the room tidied up a little. No help for all that's broken, but he really could give a rip, except he needs to be organized again, prepared. There are things to do, numerous things, and the clock is ticking. 

He puts a few things in a separate bag. Sam might need them, probably will if the Winchester brand of shit luck holds true, and Dean – this new improved Dean, this fully aware and clear-eyed Dean – is unable to get rid of it all. So he reserves one of the shotguns, the Glock, ammo and other items that will be useful. The rest, he cleans and places in the other duffel, wondering if Sam is awake yet and hoping he isn't.

By nine he's driving, no morning coffee for him or Sam, Dean's hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. One unanticipated side-effect of all that military training, all that gun training and weapons exposure: John's contacts are also Dean's, sporadically used but familiar, and he drives without hesitation, the shop in Franklin, half an hour outside K.C. He has no license for the weapons he carries, slung like dirty laundry in a bag in the back seat, but this man won't give a shit. After all, much of this originated here anyway.

Joe Allen's older than Dean remembers, a little stooped and grayer, but he remembers Dean, eyes widening with surprise when Dean closes the jingling front door of the pawn shop behind him.

"Dean Winchester," Joe says, hands on his hips. "Well, I'll be."

Dean doesn't smile. "You in the market?" he asks, and slings the heavy bag up on the counter.

Joe's older now, but there's more than a trace of that old Marine bearing there, the stiff upper lip just-business thing, and he doesn't even glance at the bag. Still watching Dean, like a dog you didn't know, wasn't sure if it'd lick your hand or bite it. "Here and there," Joe says. "What you got?"

"Everything," Dean says. He places his hands flat on the counter. Not hiding anything. "You name it."

Now Joe frowns, because Dean's come here a dozen times in the past to buy, trade, but never to sell. "You bowing out of the game, boy?" he asks, with real surprise in his voice. "I don't believe that."

"Believe what you want." Dean unzips the bag, yanks so it stands open. "Take a look."

There's a lot to look at. The Winchester model 21s, two of them, and the butt on one still has a chip on the upper corner from the werewolf's face back in '99. Sig Sauer, his precious Colt 1911 semi-auto, the ancient Peacekeeper. More.

"You really are," Joe says in a wondering voice, glancing back at him. "You're walking away. Does John know about this?"

Dean faces him stonily. "How much?"

"Shit, Dean." Joe scratches his head.

"Couple of them don't look like much, but you know they got it where it counts. And you and I both know you can move them."

"Let's sit down and talk about this."

Dean sneers. "Nothing to talk about. You don't want 'em, Joe, I'll find somebody else that does."

Joe nods slowly, says, "Cup of coffee. For old times' sake."

Finally Dean agrees, because he needs this money, run-out cash, lots easier than hustling some pissant pool games, and so he takes the coffee, sits uneasily at the battered table in the stockroom in back. Joe's coffee is fiercely black and thick, and Dean feels the caffeine hitting his strained nerves like a pure jolt of adrenaline. His heart speeds up.

"You mad at him?" Joe asks after they've sat there silently for a minute.

"Who?" Dean asks, although he doesn't have to.

Joe smiles, shakes his head. "John's an asshole, always has been. But this isn't you, Dean. I know you, kiddo, known you since that first day when John dragged you in here with him to pick out your first goddamn handgun. What were you? Seven?"

Dean meets his gaze and swallows. "Eight."

"Now I can give you cash for those weapons out there." Joe lifts his chin in the direction of the store, and shrugs. "Won't be what they're worth, not quite, but it'll be better than you'd get anywhere else. We both know that. But first I'm gonna ask you something. You sure about this?"

The coffee is tarry in his mouth, nasty, but he can't spit it out. "Sure as I'm sitting here."

"John know what you're doing?"

"John," Dean spits the word like he won't, the coffee, "is out of the picture. And as soon as you give me my money, I am, too. Got that?"

"All right, then," Joe says mildly. Eyes too assessing, too keen. Too much like Dad's. Not-Dad's. "Let's do business."

They haggle, but not much. They both do know what the weapons are worth, the extra ammo, the accessories. And Joe names a figure that Dean thinks is pretty goddamn generous, and dickering over it is an exercise, nothing more.

Joe goes to the safe behind the calendar on the wall, takes out money. He's loaded, Dad's told Dean more than once, the place is a rathole nightmare and Joe's clothes are faded and not real clean, but he's miserly with his money and there's a lot to be had in the gun trade, especially when you're not too particular about where that money's coming from or what the goods will be used for. Joe's got his own code, a paramilitary one, a mercenary's way of thinking, and he's been putting by for a rainy day for decades now.

It's raining in Dean's world, cats and fucking dogs, and he takes the money and flinches when Joe's hand closes over his fingers.

"This isn't like you," Joe says softly. His eyes are narrow with honest concern. "Out of the blue like this. You in trouble, son? You got friends, not just your dad's but yours, too. All you gotta do is ask."

"I'm fine," Dean says through freezing lips. "Thanks anyway."

He's walking to the door, so light after carrying that leaden bag of his father's junk that he feels like he'll fly off the planet, and Joe calls, "I'll hold onto these a little. See if you don't change your mind."

"I won't," Dean says, and hits the door straight-arm.

A mile short of the Kansas City line, he pulls to the side of the road and leans out, spilling Joe Allen's shitty coffee and the remnants of last night's enchiladas on the asphalt. And sits, waiting to see if there'll be more, waiting to see if this lightheaded untethered feeling will go away or get worse. He's unarmed now. The first time in his life, first fucking time ever. He has a knife in his boot, but he has no use for the trick space in the Impala's trunk, could actually put a real spare tire in there if he chooses now, because what else will it be used for? Luggage? He owns nothing. A few changes of clothes, a toothbrush, a cardboard box filled with fake I.D.s and rubber credit cards. He's twenty-seven and he doesn't own a television set or a bookshelf, a chair or a table. He has never leased an apartment, or owned a pet.

He grips the steering wheel and knocks his forehead against the smooth plastic, clenches his eyes shut and gathers himself together. Focus, Dean, his father jeers inside his head. I need you to be strong. You're the oldest, you've got what it takes, now show me what you're made of. Don't give me this crap, just do it.

"You're not my dad," Dean croaks. "You don't give me orders."

The Impala jerks when he puts it back in gear.

Sam's up, pacing the sidewalk in front of his room when Dean gets back. His face is set in lines of worry and fury, and he doesn't even wait for Dean to climb all the way out of the car before he's yelling.

"You fucker, where the fuck have you been? I wake up and you're GONE, man, what the hell was that?"

Dean slams the car door and nods. "Good morning to you, too, sunshine," he says, brushing past him.

Sam's hand is steel on Dean's elbow, yanking him back. "Where did you go?"

"Business, Sam," Dean says, because Sammy's his brother but Sam is not his brother, Sam is someone else's responsibility now. Dad's – John's – or maybe Sammy's his own responsibility. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's long past time. "Just business."

Sam's fist clenches, and Dean flicks a disinterested look at it. "Goddamn you," Sam whispers, shaking his head.

"Too late," Dean says flintily. "Already done."

There's more, but he's got other things to think about. Sam's a distraction, something else he has to get situated before he can start on what it is he needs to do. It's all cleanup right now, and Dean's got a list in his head, short and not real sweet, business to take care of.

He buys them some lunch, because Sam's still wobbly on his feet without the cane and the fuel is necessary. They eat in silence, sitting in Sam's cool motel room, and Sam puts down his sandwich after two bites and says, "Christo."

Dean pauses in mid-chew, goggling at him, and then nearly chokes because he's laughing so hard. Laughing until the tears stream down his cheeks, until his stomach lurches and muscles cramp, because it is absolutely the goddamn funniest thing he's heard in a long, long time, and Sam's expression when Dean can see through his tears is alternately sheepish and pissed off and worried.

It's only when the laughing starts to sound strange, like some kind of fucking hysteria or something, that Dean finally starts to try to get it under control. It's hard. He quivers with random snickers for a minute or two, and wipes his face with his napkin.

"So you're not possessed," Sam says prissily. "I get that."

Dean stuffs the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and chews. "Not today, Sam."

"If it didn't possess you, what did it do?"

"Doesn't matter. Drop it."

Sam leans back and raises his hands, lets them drop in his lap. "So what now?" he asks, gazing at the drawn curtains. "We keep playing this game forever? What is it you want me to say, Dean? What will it take?"

"I don't want you to say anything." Dean wads up his crap and flings it at the wastebasket, misses. "In fact at this point I'd pay you to shut up."

"Was it about Dad? What it told you?"

"Was it bigger than a breadbox? No, Sam. Okay? I'm not playing motherfucking twenty questions with you. Got it? Move along."

He's moving himself, putting his jacket back on although it's plenty warm outside, doesn't need it. It's familiar, though, comfortable. His. It works.

Sam hasn't moved. Just sitting there, dark eyes sad and unreadable, and says, "You're wandering. Just like in my dream."

"Nope," Dean replies crisply. "Wrong answer."

"But I can't see what you're looking for," Sam says, as if he hasn't heard. Dreamy eyes, eyes that see too goddamn much in Dean's opinion. "And you can't, either. Can you?"

"I see plenty. All I need." Dean shrugs. "The car's got a knock. Since we're sitting for a while, I'm gonna take her in, see what's going on. I'll be back in a little."

He turns to the open door, and it slams hard enough to shiver the glass in the window.

"No," Sam says calmly. "Stay."

Dean keeps on looking at the closed door, the door no one touched. "Nice parlor trick, Sammy," he says. "Now open the fucking door."

"Not a chance."

"All right, then." It echoes in his startled brain – Sam did that, Sam did that with his MIND, good Christ – but he lumbers forward, puts his hand on the doorknob, and something cool and impersonal wafts over him, encircles him and clenches hard, and he can't move at all. Frozen in place, like a stop-motion photograph.

"Not until I let you."

The voice chills him like the door didn't, and Dean makes his lungs fill with air – charged air, weird spooky air – and says, "Let go, or we're done. Done, Sam, all the way."

Just as easily as it's touched him, it's gone again, that constraining power, and in its wake Dean shudders all over, fear and shock and fierce, consuming anger like a pulsing tumor in his chest. When he turns Sam's face is pale with surprise, maybe some shock of his own. It doesn't touch Dean.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispers. "I didn't know I would do that."

"Do it again," Dean says, "and I will kill you. I swear to God, I will shoot your ass my own self."

Sam opens his mouth, and Dean says, "You keep your freaky-ass telekinetic BULLSHIT away from me. FUCK you! Don't you fucking MESS with me!"

Sam shrinks back, and there is a tiny, guttering part of Dean that remembers that should bother him, that should feel wrong, because Sammy's his responsibility, Sammy's his brother and brothers should not fear each other, not like this. Not draw back like he expects to be struck, or worse.

But it's flickering, dying, and in its place is cleansing, seductive anger, putting the spine in him, the resolve, the guts. "You remember that, next time you decide to show off all those new tricks of yours," Dean spits venomously. "You just fucking remember what I said. Am I understood? SAMMY?"

No reply. Sam's face is as stony as their father's. "I understand, Dean," he says, level and calm. "A lot more than you think."

Not everything, Dean thinks. Oh, not everything.

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

_Notes: The reply-to-review thing is still newish to me, and I've had trouble keeping up with reviews; I'd really like to thank y'all for your extremely kind words about this story, and apologize for being slow with the replies. Writing a great deal + work makes me a dull girl socially. But I mean it about the appreciation, more than I can adequately say._

_This concludes Part One of this long-ass story. I will begin posting Part Two sometime in the next couple of weeks, maybe sooner, but there will be a brief hiatus right now. I am working at the same time on another long story, but won't be posting it here until that one is complete, just to be cautious. _

_Thanks again, and here's the end of Part One. EB_

* * *

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**10.**

There is no one else at the car wash. It's a sunny day, warm, too warm for his jacket, so he strips it off before plugging in a few coins and grabbing the sprayer.

He works slowly. No hurry. He's always been careful to keep her clean. Part of it's vanity, another part pragmatism. She's a sweet-looking vehicle under any circumstances, and dirt can hurt her, salt will rust out the undercarriage, scratches becoming more, dings worse than that. She isn't mint condition, not with the hundreds of thousands of miles on the odometer, but for her age and hard use she's in good shape and he takes his time, mind blank except for this, a pleasurable task always.

It isn't until he's moved her out of the bay, under the canopy shade where he can vacuum and wipe and detail, that his throat starts to ache. His eyes are blurry, and he wipes them on the back of his hand, goes back to polishing chrome.

There is nothing he can do for the two faint stains on the back-seat leather. Old blood, mostly gone but a shadow remains, a whispered reminder of all that this car has seen, carried, endured. She, like himself, is scarred in random places, a roadmap of what they have survived together, and he strokes the cloth over the leather, turns away.

No reminders. No lingering ties. It is what has to be. He has a job to do, and he cannot focus with baggage weighing him down.

He wipes his boots carefully with a clean paper towel before he gets back in the driver's seat. He takes out his cell phone and dials.

* * *

Parkdale's north of town, and he has to consult the directions he got over the phone because it's been ages since he was out here, absolutely no memory of it. Other people are making use of the nice day, out taking care of yards, washing their own mass-produced carbon-copy plastic cars, walking the damn dogs, and the Impala gets more than one impressed look, more than one head turning to stare in her polished, fuck-you made-of-steel wake. It pleases him, still, but the feeling is dim with pain he doesn't want to acknowledge, so he focuses on the street signs, winding his way to the address he's been given. 

He actually passes it the first time, has to backtrack, and finally parks in front of a house just like all the others on this vanilla-normal street. Only difference is the sweet T-bird parked in front of the garage, melon-pink and prime. Definitely the right place.

The man who answers the door is younger than Dean expects, a little older than himself, and he lifts his chin and walks outside instead of inviting him in. "Chuck Norquist," he says. His grip is firm and brief. "You must be Dean."

Dean nods, shoving his hands back in his jeans pockets. "So."

"So that's it, huh." Norquist steps around him, eyes fixed on the Impala.

He can't watch Norquist check her out. He studies the yard, no idea what kinds of flowers they are in the beds but they're pretty, thriving in the warmth, and the grass is neat and healthy-looking. There are kids' toys over at the side, a discarded trike and a Frisbee and a few other things. He had begged his dad for a bike. When he was eight, and they'd stayed in Richardson that entire year. Stayed because his dad got hurt and it took a while to recover, and Dean actually had time to get to know his way around.

All he'd wanted was a bike. But there hadn't been money, they were barely scraping by as it was, and all Dad had said was, "You don't need it. We have better things to do."

And Dean had nodded, because yes, what Dad said was true, they had jobs to do, a mission, and a bike seemed really pretty silly next to that.

He hadn't said anything, months later, when Dad refurbished their weaponry, spent money they didn't have on the things he said they needed. There was never a bike, and Dean had learned to ride on Dylan Montford's two-wheeler a year later, at least enough not to fall on his ass on the hot asphalt street across from the run-down Detroit apartment house where they stayed those two months. He thinks he could still ride, if he had to, but he isn't sure.

Never had time for bikes. Waste of valuable resources.

"Huh." Norquist's grunt startles him; Dean jerks around, almost reaches for a weapon he doesn't have any longer. The guy doesn't notice. He's enthralled, and trying like hell not to show it. "Lotta miles on her."

"Room for more," Dean says, shakily.

"Not all original, either."

Dean stifles a sigh. "I didn't just come from a car show, dude, and you said you understood that. So let's talk."

Norquist finally looks at him, pulls his lips down while he thinks. He's got pale, office-worker skin and an expensive haircut. "Original owner?"

"It's been in the family. Bought new."

"Any problems I should know about?"

Nothing substantial, and Dean tells him as much, honestly. He's done lying. Doesn't pay.

Finally Norquist shrugs. "Five thousand."

"Cash on the barrel?"

"Deal."

They shake, and Dean feels Norquist's soft, untrained hand and wants to shudder with disgust. Not the right person for this vehicle, his chariot, his unfailing unvarying companion when no one else was around, everyone else kept leaving but she stayed, she kept him company and gave him shelter when he needed it, speed and ferocity when it was time for such. She treated him right, and he has always tried to do the same, respecting her power and her beauty and feeling it, inside, that she knew he did. And repaid him tenfold.

He stares at the car while Norquist briefly vanishes, comes back outside with a fat envelope and a piece of paper he wants Dean to sign. It occurs to Dean that he should take the knife warm in his boot and slice it across his wrist, scribble his name in fresh blood on the paper. It seems appropriate, somehow. Better than impersonal ink.

He stuffs the envelope in his jacket pocket and nods when the guy thanks him. It's not enough money, will never be enough money, and as quick as that he's shaking all over, trembling with the need to scream that this car deserves BETTER than to sit in someone's garage and wait for the one or two days a month when someone will start her up and take her out for a Sunday spin. She's a workhorse, she's a deadly beautiful warrior all her own, and she will suffer in a life like that. Fade, wither, lose her snakebite edge and slump into dowager drowsiness. Forget what her purpose is.

But she's Dad's. Before she's his. And he wants nothing of John's any longer. Not his car, not his life. Not his name. Nothing at all, no reminders.

"You – want a ride someplace?" Norquist asks, looking awkward.

Dean shakes his head and reaches out to touch the Impala's hood with two fingers. Kiss goodbye, my darling. I'm sorry. "No, thanks," he whispers. "I'll walk."

Halfway down the block, another house identical to the one he's left behind, and he stops and bends at the waist, fist pressed to his mouth. It's too much, go back, give the guy his fucking money back and drive away, for the love of God, it isn't worth it, not this, too.

It was never yours. None of it.

He can't stop crying. But he puts his foot forward, follows it with the other, stares without seeing at the sidewalk and the street corner and he will not look back. He will never look back. His father taught him that.

* * *

"Had to leave it overnight," he tells Sam when he asks about the car. The lie is easy, fluid. All of Dean's last lingering doubts are gone, washed away in the cleansing of his earlier tears. He is hollow now, waiting to be filled with the truth, and Sam's worry and mistrust do nothing but tink harmlessly against his fierce cold armor, fall to the ground. 

It may be why it's easy to sit in Sam's room that evening, eating delivery Chinese and watching mindless television. Sam's penitent, still shocked at lashing out with power neither of them understands, and he does not press. Instead he pokes at the laptop during commercial breaks, scans page after page of news headlines and the funky special-interest-group forums they both know too well by now, and later on he says, "Want to go to Anchorage?"

Dean's tired, his eyes burning from the remnants of this afternoon and from tonight's wavering tv picture, and he's always wanted to go to Alaska. So he nods, says, "What?"

Sam elaborates about missing workers, an obligatory reference to John Carpenter and "The Thing," and Dean listens and feels nothing. No flicker of interest, no pressing sense of obligation, responsibility, curiosity. Vengeance. It's like poking a long-dead firepit in an abandoned campsite. The embers are cold, useless.

"We can go tomorrow," Sam says, and fear quivers behind his strong voice, his confident words. "I'm ready. And I know you're ready. It's been driving you – crazy."

Dean eats a leftover wonton and meets Sam's imploring gaze. "Whatever you say."

Sam nods slowly, and turns back to the computer.

At midnight, he stands and says, "Better turn in."

"Stay here," Sam whispers. "Feels funny, you in another room."

"Hey, it's paid for. Don't waste it." Dean smiles formally, and nods. "See you later, Sammy."

"Dean?"

He's impatient now. Now that it's all so close. "What?"

"I just wanted to say –" Sam bites his lip.

"No chick-flick moments, dude," Dean says, not without gentleness. "Remember? Get some sleep. You look tired."

"So do you," Sam whispers.

Dean nods, and scans Sam's face. Like taking a picture, that familiar face and this place, anonymous hotel room like all the others, the only homes he has ever known after that first, lost place. It all looks faded now, sepia-toned, washed out like Mom, like baby Sammy in his arms. It is a long time ago. It is gone.

"Night, Sam," Dean murmurs, and Sam doesn't slam the door for him this time.

* * *

He's thankful for his own precognition in getting separate rooms, rooms hundreds of yards apart. Next door and Sam would hear, while Dean packs, carefully folds clothes and underwear and gathers his toilet things. 

Joe's money and Norquist's together make a decent pile. Dean divides it evenly, patiently divvies out his portion into several chunks and puts most of it in his hiding places. The duffel, the hidden compartment in his boot. The rest in his wallet. It will be enough. And the stack in the envelope will tide Sam over. Enough to buy a used car, probably not a real good one but it'll be wheels, and that'll do. Dean's conscience is not perturbed. It's certainly more than Dad ever left them.

The envelope goes in the smaller bag of leftover weapons. Dean doesn't much like leaving it here, unprotected in this room, but since he's been here he has strictly forbidden housekeeping to enter, and it will not be a cleaning lady who sees it. It will be Sam, and that will work. He puts the bag in the closet, tucked away behind accordion-fold doors.

It's chilly outside, damp and fragrant, and all the surfaces are slick with dew. It will be light soon, an hour, maybe ninety minutes. He's never much liked mornings, but now the freshness of the air, the cool kiss of the damp on his cheeks, feels good. The day is waiting breathlessly to be born, hovering over the faded blue horizon, and isn't it a pretty damn good metaphor, all told? Maybe a little predictable, but hey, he can live with the occasional ordinary moment. There haven't been many of those, all told.

His steps slow as he nears Sam's door. Stop entirely, and Dean places his palm flat on the red-painted wood. He wants to say goodbye, feels there should be some way of marking the moment in his mind, this moment he had never thought even remotely possible until only a few days ago.

But nothing comes. So he pats the door, ducks his head and walks onward.

By the time the sun is completely up, he's standing by the interstate on-ramp, and after only ten minutes a guy unrolls the passenger-side window in a battered furniture delivery van and yells, "Need a lift?"

Dean grabs his bag and jogs over. "Yeah, man."

"I can drop you by the exchange. How far you going?"

Dean shrugs, and says, "Not sure yet." He grins. "Wherever I end up, I guess."

The guy nods. "Well, come on."

* * *

_END PART ONE_


	11. Chapter 11

_Notes: Sorry for the delay; RL created a few obstacles to be overcome. Thanks for your patience! This chapter begins part two, which will be roughly ten chapters in length. Part three, eventually, will conclude the tale. I appreciate all your kind words far more than I can say, and I hope the continuation will please. EB**

* * *

**_**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

A little while when I am gone  
My life will live in music after me,  
As spun foam lifted and borne on  
After the wave is lost in the full sea.

A while these nights and days will burn  
In song with the bright frailty of foam,  
Living in light before they turn  
Back to the nothingness that is their home.  
(Sara Teasdale, "A Little While")

**Part Two**

I have free will, but not of my own choice

**11.**

He sleeps, and dreams.

He would like to tell Dean, sometime, when Dean is Dean again, that not all dreams are created equal. That dreams are most often just that, nothing sinister, nothing but the spilling-over of thoughts too multiple and ongoing to be contained during the day, slopping into the nights, slithering and cavorting and finally wearing themselves out in the dim sunless fields of unconsciousness.

He dreams, and sees his father's smiling face, and Dean's cheeks wet with tears. Sam stands to the side, wordless and struggling, while the ground dissolves under Dean's booted feet, and still John Winchester smiles his sad, informed smile, and Sam jolts awake with Dean's name on his lips and his chest tight with agony.

It's full daylight, late by his normal standards, honed as they are by countless early hunts and study sessions. He's always resented sleep, found it a waste of precious time, and he curses while he swings his legs over the side of the bed.

Fucking stupid dreams. If he could have elective surgery to remove the dream-making part of his brain he'd sign up today. Screw the insurance.

It feels odd to see no one in the other bed. He and Dean have always shared a room, supposedly to save money, but sharing is familiar and comforting. Even though as a boy, Sam would have given anything at all for some goddamn privacy every once in a while, he's easy with Dean's presence, deeply so. But Dean has his own room this time, and Sam swallows dream-shaped anxiety and goes into the bathroom, stares at his face in the mirror while he brushes his teeth and thinks, Just a dream. Just another goddamn Sam Special.

When he's done he dials Dean's number, tucking the phone under his chin while he wrestles his way into his jeans. His legs are stronger, and he doesn't need the cane yet today. Maybe later, and there's still a hitch in his get-along, but it's doable. Better than maybe Dean knows, Dean who's so hell-bent on being super-caregiver.

There is no answer. Sam swallows and puts on a shirt and shoes, thinking about Dean, and all that Dean has not told him, secrets, so many goddamn secrets.

He's outside before he realizes he doesn't even know Dean's room number. Dean's car is gone.

The motel office is shabby, smelling like old cigarettes. Sam smiles at the clerk and clears his throat. "Hi, I'm in number six. My brother's staying here, but I don't have his room number."

"Name?"

Sam freezes. Dean never gives real surnames, and Sam has no idea which alias he's using here. "Dean," he stammers. "M-Martinez." It's the name he's used in the hospital. Maybe it's good.

"That one, yeah. He's in fifteen. End of the row."

"Do I – Do we owe you anything?"

"Paid up through Wednesday."

The motel looks deserted, so Sam glances around automatically but isn't really worried about being seen. This is an older facility, easy old-fashioned locks, and he picks up his kit before he goes to Dean's room. Knocking at number fifteen is an exercise; if the Impala's gone so is Dean, and Sam's already got his tools in his hand, bending to work the magic he'd learned when he was what, ten years old. Practicing with a lock on the Formica table in a kitchenette in Tuskegee, Alabama while Dean watched, gave him an approving nod each time he teased the tumblers into their locked positions, felt that satisfying click in his fingertips.

By the time he was twelve he was faster than Dean at the job, patient where Dean was restless, and after that most of the traditional lock-picking went to Sam. Now his hands shake, blood hissing in his ears, and his time is for shit, but finally the tumblers fall out of the way and he turns the knob.

There's no one there. He can feel it, the moment he breathes the air: Empty rooms have an absence, voids waiting with more or less patience to be filled. Dean's room is quiet, just the hiss of the air conditioner.

Sam stands inside the door, tools still held loosely in his hand.

"Dean," he breathes.

It's a shambles. The bed is stripped bare, down to the mattress pad, and the remains of the bedside lamp lie on the floor, swept out of the way but not cleaned up. There is a gaping hole in the television screen, like a gouged-out eye. Table and chair are pushed out of the way, but there is a dent in the drywall, tabletop-level, and the AC is missing its cover panel.

And over all of it, drifts of paper, torn pages, bits so small they look machine-made.

He sees the journal on the floor next to the dresser and wheezes a sharp breath when he bends down to pick it up. It's skinny instead of fat with pages, sinking in on itself, and Sam gasps another "Dean" while he opens it, just an exercise because the journal's contents are at his feet, shifting in the breeze from the open door.

He sags down on the mattress, knees turned liquid. One thought throbbing in his brain: Dean did this. Dean tore up Dad's journal. The sacred screed, the history of the Winchesters' fucked-up lives, the all-knowing reference to which they had directed themselves nearly every day of the past year. All that information, all that – reduced to the snowy garbage on the floor of Dean's motel room.

Dean's phone sits on top of the dresser. Uttering periodic soft beeps, messages waiting, missed calls. The charger is nearby.

Sam clutches his father's empty journal to his chest and closes his eyes.

* * *

The room, when he can bring himself to move again, holds a few clues. The most puzzling is the shoebox of tapes on the floor by the far side of the bed. Sam doesn't have to check to know the labels on those tapes; he's shuffled them often enough, rolled his eyes while Dean scanned the names and chose which to inflict on him that particular moment. Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Boston, Kansas, Allman Brothers, Megadeth, Nirvana ,and of course, Metallica. _And Justice For All_ and _Master of Puppets_ and the black album. Dean doesn't like the newer Metallica, says it's crap, and so his selections are the standards, the stuff that put them on the map in the first place. Enter Sandman and all the rest. 

Dean's music is still here, and that's like finding Dean's severed arm lying on the floor, discarded like it doesn't matter. Sam sucks in breath and lets it out and hears it like a moan on the air, waves his hands over the box but doesn't dare touch anything. If he touches, he proves its reality. He can't. Won't.

There's a duffel bag in the closet, zipped and sides bulging.

He studies the bag for a long time. Dean bought this a few months ago, right after Sam joined up again. Dean usually puts clothes in there, but right now it's heavy, too heavy for any but one sort of thing, and Sam reaches for the straps and flinches, because this is another Dean thing, like the tapes, and if he grabs it, it will be another trespass.

He grits his teeth and slings the bag on the bed to unzip it. Weapons, ammo, a half-empty bottle of holy water, a few other items. It's a travel version of Dean's arsenal, the one he'd been bequeathed, Sam guesses, when their father went his own way.

There's an envelope inside as well, and Sam's mouth tightens because he knows what that is, too, before he checks. Fat with money, limp twenties and tens, several crisp hundreds.

With a raw sound he flings the envelope away, and watches bills flutter to the floor, larger rectangular counterparts to the confetti littering the carpet.

Dean has gone. Left him, as he had sworn Sam's entire life he would never, ever do. Dean is gone, and there aren't any messages in his chicken-scratch handwriting, no notes saying Be back in a couple, call me if you need anything, or Went to get food. Nothing. Nothing except the relics he's left behind, and Little Brother is the biggest of those, isn't he? While he slept, Dean packed up and split, and now Sam's just like the tapes, the bag.

He reaches up to grind the heels of his hands against his eyes. Should have done whatever he could to keep Dean from walking out that door last night. Knew something was wrong, something big, would have had to be brain-damaged not to know it, and yet he had done nothing while Dean wandered away, no, didn't wander, went with _purpose_, packed his things

_except the ones he didn't, and why _WHY _did he tear up the pages, why when it was the grail, it was everything Dean cared about except Dad and Sam_

and hit the road. Hit the road without his music, without HIM.

His chest is cold, his gut frozen. Dean left him the tools to keep going, if he so chooses. Weapons and money. Dean has _taken care of him_, one last time, and then gone as if he doesn't realize or doesn't care that Sam can do without all that, somehow, some way, doesn't give a rat's ass as long as he has his brother at his side.

He feels dizzy. You fucker, wouldn't talk to me about what was going on, what rodent was running circles inside your head, and now it's come to this, you CUT AND RUN, bastard, oh you miserable goddamn MOTHERFUCKER. So stubborn you'd do THIS rather than suck it up and tell me the fucking TRUTH.

Too bad the room is already wrecked. He'd like to break something, tear something _someone_ apart.

Instead he sits, breathing hard, and then gathers up the money on the floor and stuffs it blindly into the bag of guns, hard to see because his eyes are stinging, heart pounding so hard and fast that he can barely hear his own whispers, you fucker, Dean, where the fuck are you, why, WHY.

* * *

_TBC. EB_


	12. Chapter 12

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**12.**

"Hey, Dad."

It takes him a minute to go on. Marshaling his thoughts, when he can't think at all. Mind a total blank. He's holding the phone so tightly he wonders if the case will crack.

"Something's happened," Sam says. "Something big. I can't -- Dean split, and I don't think he's coming back. I don't know why, I think something, I don't know, he found out something, but I don't know what it was. He wouldn't tell me. Whatever it was, it's gotta be big. Just -- Call me. Soon, Dad, okay?"

His room looks strange to him after Dean's, neat and tidy. He hangs up and sits limply in the chair, staring at nothing. Find Dean, only how's he gonna do that? Dean has the car, which means Sam's stuck, KC's a good-sized city and besides, where would he start? While he sat on his useless lame ass in the hospital Dean was a busy bee, that much is obvious, and Sam doesn't even know where to begin.

Think. Think.

It hurts to go back over the past month-and-change. Because when he does force his brain to work, to consider everything that's happened, he can see the pattern. Even before rehab, that weird, slowly growing distance between Dean and himself. In hindsight it's steady, but at the time it felt jerky, one step forward and two back, and he knows a big part of that's because he was in pain, either his body pissed off because of surgery and therapy, or his mind dulled with frustration and fear and jealousy. Jealous of Dean and everyone else walking around so easily, jealous because they were still free and Sam wasn't, stuck in a hospital with nothing to DO, nothing but therapy he hated and endless empty stretches of time.

But this isn't just a case of Dean blaming himself for the shooting, Dean putting on the hair shirt of older-brother guilt. This is something else, something Sam has never, ever seen before, and the thought sends a deep-space chill through his bones, because he's really and truly working from nothing here. There are no clues, no precedents. Just a big empty hole where Dean used to be. That's all.

When he looks at his watch, he's surprised to see several hours have gone by. Hours when he should have been DOING something, anything, and it galvanizes him. His hip has stiffened, and this time he does grab his cane, sure as shit can't afford a fall at the moment, because ain't no one coming to his aid. And he's due at the hospital for his PT, so he opens his phone and dials from memory.

"Yeah, can I speak to Traci?"

He sits motionless, and finally she picks up, sounding out of breath and as cheerful as always. Never loses that perkiness, no matter how much he bitches at what she makes him do.

"Traci, it's Sam W- Martinez."

"Hey, Sam! What's up?"

"I wanted –" Sadness breaks over him like a tidal wave, salty and choking, and he clears his throat loudly. "I'm not gonna be in today."

"You okay? You need to –"

"I won't be needing any more PT, okay? I, ah. Have things to do. I just, you know. Wanted to let you know. But thanks."

She pauses just a little, and says, "You have a couple of weeks left, Sam." Her voice quieter, puzzled. "You're doing great, Sam, and I know it's frustrating, but –"

"I appreciate it," he says thickly. "Really. But I have some stuff to take care of. Family stuff."

"All right," she says, but he can't stand the honest concern in her voice. It hurts too much. He physically shrinks down, slumping into himself.

"Thanks again," he whispers, and closes his phone gently.

He's still sitting there, motionless, when the phone rings. He squints at the readout, wondering why nothing's on the screen, and slowly looks over at Dean's abandoned phone.

His fingers are so cold he can barely open it. No one says anything for a second, and so Sam says, "Dad?"

"Where is he?"

His hip hurts. He sits down on the edge of the bed again. "I was gonna ask you the same question. Wh –"

"Where are you staying?" Brisk, no-nonsense, his father's voice is almost a relief. No, not almost. Really a relief, even if he isn't actually SAYING anything.

Sam tells him, and then he's drawing breath to speak to dead air.

He calls back, but there's just the voice mail, and he lets it run for a few seconds and then hangs up.

First Dean. Who Sam can't find, even if Dean wants to be found, which seems increasingly unlikely.

Bastard.

And now Dad. Who might have answers, if he'll let go of the stiff upper lip long enough to give them.

It's too much. His hip is aching like a sullen hot tooth, referred pain all the way down to his foot, and he is so goddamn tired all of a sudden. With every passing minute Dean goes further away, and Sam has no vehicle with which to chase him, even if he knew where to seek.

Well, Dad has the truck, and he'll be here, evidently. No idea where he is at the moment, either, but he knows where Sam is. It's all Sam has. He lies back on the bed, still holding Dean's phone. He frowns, and rolls over to scan through Dean's recent calls. Numbers he doesn't recognize, no names. All local, none familiar. He picks one at random and hits redial.

"Health and Human Services. How may I direct your call?"

He lies motionless for a second, then jerkily disconnects the call. Well, that is – not what he expected. Not a lot of help. Dean might have been looking for someone. Death records, maybe; maybe he's on a case, maybe it's something big and –

It feels wrong. It's all so goddamn WRONG.

When he can't stand it any longer, he goes out and starts walking. Anger, fear, whatever, it's enough to get him upright and moving, but a block and he's gritting his teeth so hard he's given himself a headache, and his hip is a hot, screaming pain, making him limp, lean on the cane until he wonders just how long it'll be before it snaps.

A woman carrying two shopping bags walks by, giving him a covert, pitying glance, and Sam closes his eyes and then turns back, thinking, How come it always starts to rain when you're furthest from home? Because that's when you turn back, dumb ass.

He can hear Dean saying it. See his smirk, the light in his eyes like staring up at the sun under three feet of clear green ocean water.

It takes twice as long to get back to his room as it did to leave it. Inside, he finds the pharmacy bottles he hasn't yet opened. Takes the pills he's rejected until now, the ones he figured he wouldn't need because he'd take it slow, get better before he pushes it. Now he's just thankful to have them.

He falls asleep wondering if finding Dean is even possible when he can barely hobble out of a goddamn motel room.

* * *

Awakens clawing at the rumpled bedspread, head thick with sleep and painkillers, and sits up. Listening for what yanked him back to consciousness, and flinches at the renewed pounding on his door.

"Sammy." Gruff and low and familiar. "Let me in."

The pain is still there but dimmer now, like heat felt through a bakery wall. Sam hisses and limps to the door, squinting when it opens.

"Where's your brother?" his father asks, brushing past him to scan the room.

Sam swallows. "Not here."

He can see Dad looking, like he expects to find Dean hiding behind the bed. "What did he say?"

Good to see you, too, Dad, Sam thinks, and clears his gummy throat. "He didn't. He just – left."

His father glances at him. His mouth is a thin, tight line, dark eyes impossible to read. "How's the leg?"

"Still attached."

"S'good." A curt nod, familiar: We'll say no more about that. Done deal. "Tell me what happened."

It isn't the leg he wants to hear about. Sam nods and lowers himself carefully into the chair. "That's the thing. I don't know, I was in the damn hospital for most of it. When I got out he was –"

Dad narrows his eyes. "Was what?"

"Different," Sam says. "I dunno, distant," he adds after a moment.

"Pissed off? What'd you do?"

"Me? Jesus, Dad, thanks for jumping to conclusions there."

"Dean wouldn't just walk away." Dad snorts. "Not his style."

"No, I get that," Sam says tightly. "I know him, too, remember? Better than you lately."

He expects a retort, some kind of ultimatum, and he can see Dad wanting to let one or two fly. Doesn't, though, just says, "Someone's got him."

It's occurred to Sam, too. Someone forcing Dean to go, making him leave the money, the gear. He shakes his head. "I don't think so. I don't know why, I just -- He planned this. Don't you get it? He planned it all out."

"To what end?" Dad snaps. "What, your 'I gotta be me' freedom thing's catching now?"

His rage tastes old, rancid as week-old bile. "Believe me," Sam forces out, "I tried."

They stare at each other, and Sam thinks about bulls snorting and pawing the ground before his father nods curtly. Angry, still, but there's something else in his eyes now, something deep and hooded and furtive. "Get some rest," he says. "We got work to do."

He's turning away, and Sam shakes his head. "Wait, do you know something? What are you not telling me?"

Dad walks back to the door. "Dean's missing. That's my only concern right now. You want to fight, save it for after I find him."

"You mean after WE find him."

There is a chilly smile on Dad's face now, as forbidding as his earlier words were not. "Yeah, Sammy," he says absently. "We find him. You and me."

* * *

TBC. EB 


	13. Chapter 13

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**13.**

Dad looks like hell the next morning.

"Take a look in the mirror," he says dryly when Sam tells him as much. "The leg?"

Sam shakes his head and reaches up to rub his eyes. "Just couldn't sleep. Just like you. Worried."

His father's face closes off, leaving only exhaustion and calculation behind. He looks like a guy either coming off a major bender, or one about to cry. Sam knows which one he'd believe first. "He's all right," Dad says gruffly.

"If he were all right, he wouldn't have done this."

"Maybe."

They get breakfast at the diner, but neither of them eats much. After two cups of scalding black coffee Sam's brain starts to work again, and he gives his father a careful look. "You have a theory?"

Dad places his fork on his untouched plate and leans back. His arm is draped along the back of the booth seat, and Sam has a flash of clear memory: must have been four or five, and he and Dean always jostling to be the one to sit next to Dad. That strong arm, like a cradle, safe and secure when so little else was.

Dean had almost always been the one to scoot in first. Seeking out their father like a moth to flame, sitting straighter and taller in Dad's shadow. But sometimes it had been Sam, and he thinks now about that clear, easy love, childish and glorious. How simple it had been. Them, and everyone else. Dad and Dean, and Sam had never really feared for anything back then. Hadn't quite understood what it was to fear something, truly fear it.

Dad taps his fingertips on the fake leather, and Sam blinks. "Either he got yanked," Dad says slowly, "or he cut loose because it was the only way he could see."

Sam frowns. "The only way to what?"

"Get the job done."

"There was no job. I mean, Dean had a job, he was working –"

"A job-job?" That actually gets him a close look before Dad grins and shakes his head. "Wanted you to think he had one, maybe," he says, with fondness glinting in his eyes. "That's all."

"Temp work," Sam says stonily.

"Maybe." The grin is gone as suddenly as it appeared: Dad looks haggard again, secretive. "He didn't say anything? At all? No clues?"

Sam opens his mouth and his father shakes his head. "Think about it. Anything at all, Sammy. Come on."

"I've done nothing BUT think about it," Sam mutters.

"So tell me. What's _your_ theory? You always got a theory, son; lemme have it."

Sam looks away. "I think there's too much we don't know," he says finally.

"I need to talk to some people."

"Who?"

"Friends."

"Well, that narrows it down." Sam snorts, raises his hands and lets them fall again, limp on the table. "How about some answers, Dad? For once in your damn life? I mean, come --"

"I don't have any answers," Dad replies, and drinks off the last of his coffee. "Not yet. When I do, I'll tell you."

Sam nods. But there is no part of his body that trusts the sidelong look in Dad's hooded eyes.

* * *

Turns out, no surprise, Dad knows a lot of people in K.C. Sam has no memory of most of them. Dean probably knew them all, too, but Sam wasn't paying attention to them years ago, and now he's relegated to the sidelines, sitting in the hot truck or holding down a chair in someone's living room while Dad conducts his business.

No one has seen or heard from Dean in the past couple of months. Most of them, it's been far longer.

"Came through back in '02," Jimmy Elder says. He pronounces it "aught-two," which Sam's brain translates to "ought to." Jimmy's a total stranger: older than Dad, a full head of gray hair and a crazy light in his bright black eyes. Sam takes note of the dozen or more satellite dishes in the grass-free front yard, sees the MUFON sticker in the window, and thinks maybe he didn't miss out on much not getting to know him.

Jimmy thinks Dean got snatched by aliens. "They done it, Jack, sure as I'm sitting here." He grins triumphantly. "Am I right? Am I right? You know I'm right."

Dad just looks tired. "Wasn't your fucking aliens, Jim," he mutters. "That much I'm sure of. And nothing else."

"You'll see." Jimmy shrugs. "Come time for it, you'll see. We'll all see."

Val Henreid figures he got arrested, remember that business in Skowhegan. Sam's never heard Dean tell any stories about Skowhegan, and Dad isn't saying. Ernest Jackson is too addled with Alzheimer's to give a crap where Dean is, or why, and a man Dad only introduces as Frank gives Sam a look from cold blue eyes and does not allow Sam to overhear any of what he has to say.

"Who was that?" Sam asks when Dad comes back to the truck.

"A friend." Dad climbs in and reaches for the keys in the ignition.

"Yeah, I got that much by myself. Did he know –"

"Said there was a necromancer living upstate. But Dean knows better than to tackle one of those alone."

Sam watches Dad's tight, expressionless face, and thinks about telling him this is a waste of time. And then Dad draws a breath and says, "We're spinning our wheels here," and Sam just nods.

"We'll head out tomorrow."

Sam blinks at him. "Where? Where are we going?"

Dad ignores it, puts the truck in gear and heads back in the direction of the highway. "You're limping. What'd the doctor say about that leg?"

"Don't try to distract me, Dad, I'm not a kid anymore. What –"

"No good to me if you're lamed up. Or Dean, either. Need to get some exercise, use those muscles. Can't have you lagging behind if we get down to it."

"Down to WHAT? Do you know something?"

Dad doesn't look over. "Don't worry about it."

"Oh, no." Sam shakes his head, reaches up to push the hair out of his eyes. "You don't get off that easy."

"You watch your tone there."

"My TONE?"

"Tell me what you remember." It's hard, emotionless. "All of it, Sammy, don't leave anything out. What did he say, where did he –"

"I don't know. Nothing, he didn't say shit, Dad. Things happened while I was in the hospital. It started –" He pauses, then takes out Dean's cell phone, scrolling quickly through the sent calls.

"Started? When?"

Sam gazes unseeingly at him. Health and Human Services. "The birth certificate," he whispers. "Yeah."

Dad's hands tighten on the steering wheel. "What did you say?"

"Out of the blue, this one night, he asked me about my birth certificate. If I had a copy. I told him I did, and he said he didn't have one. I told him to go get a copy, since it was close. He said he did. I asked him later."

"Did he show it to you?"

"No. He said he left it in the car. I didn't -- I forgot about it later." Sam watches him. "You think that's it? Something to do with why he split like this?"

"You tell me."

Sam watches him, sees the way his father won't quite meet his eyes. Thinks about Dean's room. "No," he says evenly. "I think you're the one who's got explaining to do."

Dad's eyes are cold, forbidding. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what I found when I checked Dean's room?" Sam swallows. "Your journal. What's left of it."

His father goes perfectly still. Sam grins savagely. "Yeah, he trashed it. Now who does that have to do with? Me, or you, Dad? From where I sit –"

"Dean would never do that." A low, heartfelt whisper. More to himself than to Sam. "Not willingly. Ever."

"That's what I thought, too. Only he did. Yeah, Dad," Sam says jeeringly. "This is gonna knock your socks off."

"You watch your mouth, Sammy."

It's said without much heat, a reflex response, and Sam waits for Dad to go on but there's nothing more. He settles for glaring out the passenger window, thinking about how things change and don't, and how Dean would have –

His breath catches in his throat. "Dad," Sam says rustily. "Pull over."

"Jesus, now what? Can't you –"

"Pull the fuck over already."

He's already scrabbling at the door handle while Dad jerks the truck to the side of the road. They're back in the suburbs, a hell of fast-food franchises and chain stores. Sam staggers when he climbs out, hip squealing, and catches himself on the door. Dad rounds the back of the truck while Sam fishes for his cane, already saying, "What the hell do you think you're –"

"Dad. Look."

It's a car wash, one of the expensive ones where you sit in an air-conditioned lobby while the slobs outside do the hard work in the heat. Busy today: lots of cars. Sam's only looking at one. Parked off to the right in solitary splendor, gleaming like hot black glass in the sun. A sunburned boy bends down, polishing the chrome.

"Well, that didn't take as long as I thought," comes Dad's dry voice at his side.

"Bastard," Sam breathes, and limps through the parking lot, breath coming in fast tight squeezes. Bastard, let us think all this shit and you're just, what, fucking around?

The metal is hot from the sun, barely dry. Sam runs his hands along the panel, up to the roof, ignoring the car-wash boy's curious stare. Sam looks over at his father. "I'll go get him."

Dad watches him, silently, and Sam snorts and turns to go inside.

It's not Dean's kind of place. Dean likes to do the work himself, has never, to Sam's knowledge, allowed a minimum-wage worker to wash his baby. But it is Dean's Impala, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Ergo, for whatever reason, he's here.

Except he's not. Eight or nine people inside the too-cool lobby, various expressions of boredom or impatience or tiredness on their faces, but not a one of those belongs to Dean. Sam stands uncertainly near the door, hands worrying at the hem of his shirt.

"He's not here," Dad says behind him.

"Doesn't go anywhere without the goddamn car," Sam says.

"First time for everything. Come on."

The boy has finished detailing the car outside, and Sam squints at it. A pair of black and white fuzzy dice dangle from the rear-view mirror.

"Dean ain't the fuzzy-dice type," his father remarks, disapproval and worry in his tone.

A pink sweater on the passenger seat, and in the back –

Stolen. The fucking car's been stolen, and that means Dean is in trouble. Big-time trouble, while they've dicked around talking to Dad's pals and gotten absolutely nothing accomplished.

Sam wipes sweat from his forehead and bends low, squinting to see the lock.

"Excuse me?"

Sam casts a look behind him, sees a guy standing a few feet away. His plump face is red, and he looks pissed. Hands on his generous hips.

"Just having a look," Dad says calmly.

"This car is a classic, okay? You can look, but no touch."

"This car isn't YOURS," Sam snarls. "Where's my brother?"

The guy kinda puffs up, gets redder. "I got a goddamn bill of sale that says it's mine," he says. "Who the fuck are you? What –"

Sam takes a step forward and grabs the front of the guy's shirt. "What happened to Dean? Tell me, you son of a bitch. Tell me!"

A hand claps down hard on Sam's shoulder. He ignores it, and his father's stern voice: "We're not doing this. Stop it. Now."

"He knows," Sam grinds out, glaring into the man's fearful eyes. "He knows where he is, and he's gonna tell me. Aren't you?" He reaches back, under his shirt, grasping the grip of his weapon.

"You're nuts," the guy gasps. "Jesus, let me –"

This time Dad uses real force, fingers digging painfully deep into Sam's shoulder, and Sam lets go, stumbling back and catching himself on the cane. His heart is going so fast it's making him dizzy, and there's a tinny roar in his ears. Dad says, "Let's step over here."

The guy shakes his head. "I'm calling the cops, man, he's fucking crazy."

Dad grasps the guy's wrist. It looks gentle. From the flicker of pain on the guy's sweaty face, it isn't. "Over here," Dad says smoothly.

Behind the wall separating the car wash from the next-door convenience store, Dad finally lets the guy go. His face is infernally calm: let's talk this out. Behind him, Sam leans heavily on his cane, hating it, tingling with rage and adrenaline.

"This is my son's vehicle," Dad says, same level honest voice as earlier. He spreads his hands wide. "And he's gone missing. You understand my concern."

"I understand he assaulted me!" the guy snaps, and points a shaking finger at Sam. "I'll sue your ass, you prick, you can be sure –"

Sam's already moving, a snarl lifting his upper lip, but it's nothing to the liquid scary speed of his father. The patient smile vanishing as if it had never been, and a fucking .357 Magnum out of nowhere, kissing the guy's flushed cheek.

"I'm pretty tired," Dad says conversationally. "And I'm awful scared for my boy. So I'm gonna offer you a word of advice, friend. Don't. FUCK with me."

The guy's eyes are round and terrified. He gives a quick faint nod, throat working while he swallows.

"Now then." Dad pats the guy's shoulder, although the gun doesn't waver. "Tell me where you got the car."

"H -- He sold it. To me. The guy."

"What guy?"

"Y-young guy. D-Dean something."

Dad stares flatly at him, and Sam shakes his head. "That's a lie," he says between gritted teeth. "He's lying."

"You yanking my chain?" Dad hasn't even twitched at Sam's words; his focus is still entirely centered on the red-faced guy.

"No! No, I swear to God." Tears have appeared in the guy's eyes, spilling down his distended cheek where the gun still presses hard. "I -- I got the b-bill of sale. It's -- G-glove box."

"Sammy. See if he's lying."

Sam takes the keys dangling from the man's shaking hand and strides back to the Impala. A little cluster of people are lingering by the door to the lobby, and he feels their eyes on him, like a searchlight. The gun is safely hidden under his shirt, but he has no way of knowing whether or not someone has already called the cops. Fuck it. They won't be here long anyway.

He finds the slip of paper with no trouble. There's nothing else in the glove compartment. Dean's scrawled signature is all too clear.

"He's not lying," Sam says in a low voice when he rounds the wall again. "It's him. Jesus."

"How much?" Dad asks silkily.

"Five -- Shit, five thousand."

"I ex-expected him to haggle," the guy babbles. "He didn't. Swear to God, he just took the money. I even – even offered to give him a lift. He d-didn't take it."

Dad watches him consideringly, then gives a slow nod. "You think five thousand's a fair price?"

"I j -- He was – in a hurry. He said."

"Uh-huh. Got a bargain. Car that vintage, in this kinda shape? You made out like a bandit. Didn't you?"

The guy flushes again, and his eyes dart away, flickering over Sam and then hopelessly, back to Dad.

"Two ways this can play out," Dad continues, still nodding. "One, I give you some money for your trouble, and we tear up this bill of sale and everybody goes away happy. Do you want to hear number two?"

Frozen, the guy says nothing.

"Number two," Dad grates, "you call the cops, we tell them this is a stolen vehicle. Bet you haven't had time to change the title yet, have you? Worse for you, it's my name on the title. Not his. So this is my car, my friend, and the law will back me up."

The guy licks his lips, blinking rapidly. "How much?"

"A fair price." Dad grins suddenly, blindingly. "Glad you're gonna see the light." The gun retreats, stowed away again, and Dad takes his wallet out and removes a stack of bills. "Pleasure doing business with you. Oh, and thanks for having her washed. She's a real beauty, isn't she?"

The guy doesn't look at the money. Only watches Dad, as a mouse watches the back of a retreating cat.

Dad glances briefly at Sam. "Let's go."

Sam gives a shaky nod and follows.

* * *

_ TBC. EB_


	14. Chapter 14

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**14.**

"Good Christ," Dad whispers.

Sam can't think of anything to say to that. It's been a full day since he saw Dean's handiwork, and now it hits him all over again: the litter of shredded paper, the broken furniture, dents in the drywall. Dean's left a few places trashed in his life – more than a few, although a pretty good percentage of those weren't necessarily his fault – but Sam has never seen anything quite like this.

His father stands in the middle of the room, face drawn with shock. He looks old, and Sam fights down a shiver: this is what Dad will look like at eighty. If he lives to see eighty.

"I didn't know," Sam says quietly. "I didn't hear him doing this. I just -- It was like this after he left."

Dad reaches out and picks up what's left of the journal. It's not much, and Sam can see that fact penetrate, his father's shoulders drooping, the journal sagging in his hands.

"Dad, why don't –"

"Get out."

It's a thin, raspy old-man's voice, not his dad's strong baritone, and Sam freezes in place. Dad clasps the empty journal to his chest and gives him a brief, terrible glance. "Get out, Sammy," he repeats hoarsely.

Sam nods and does, closing the door gently behind him.

There's no triumph in this, the wreck of John Winchester's carefully constructed house of cards. It's all falling apart, all of it, maybe began with Sam's departure for California and the lure of the exotic normal, but here is where it – something – ends. Sam is suddenly, coldly sure that his own perceived betrayal had not hit his father nearly as hard as Dean's. Dean, the trustworthy son, the unquestioning loyalist, would never, ever do this. But he has; he cashed in his chips and left the building without a word to anyone, and it's worse because it's unfathomable.

He's pretty sure their father knows, knows exactly, and a thin sliver of renewed anger slides sweetly up his spine. Pretty soon now. Very soon he's gonna figure it out, too. Just a matter of time.

The Impala sits silent and sleek, dwarfed by Dad's enormous truck but undaunted. Sam swallows grief-flavored rage and pats the front fender on his way back to his room.

Inside, he takes out Dean's phone and scans the list of sent calls again. He wants to ask Dad about them. Do you recognize any of these?

He frowns at one of the numbers. The area code's familiar, but that's all he has to work with. He hits redial and waits.

It rings three times before a hoarse male voice says, "Allen's."

Sam unlocks his clenched jaw enough to say, "J-Joe?"

"Who's this?"

"Joe, it's Sam Winchester. John Wi—"

"Aw, yeah. Sammy! Jesus, what is this, Winchester Home Week?"

Sam swallows with difficulty. "You saw Dean?"

There's a pause, and Joe says, "Figured one of you might be calling. I kept his gear."

"His -- You have it?"

"Your daddy around? Maybe he –"

"He's unavailable. Joe, tell me what happened. Please?"

It's not a long story, but Sam's hands are cold as ice by the time Joe's done. A version of Dean that Sam has never met: a cold, brisk stranger, according to Joe's description, a guy who's burning his bridges just as fast as he can. Cutting all ties.

"Said he was done," Joe says. "Gotta tell you, Sam, I tried to talk him out of doing it. Getting mad's one thing, but that's a hell of a lot of gear. Asked him if John knew what he was up to, and he flat shut me down. Never seen nothing like it."

"Did –" Sam clears his throat. "Did he seem – wrong? I mean, was there something –"

"What, did he seem like he had some kinda passenger? Wasn't possessed, not and come in my shop. Wards would have stopped him before he got the door open, you know that, son."

Sam's shoulders sag. It's been a narrow hope, but hope nonetheless, and now that little flicker is gone, too. "Yeah," he sighs.

"Look, I'll hang onto this equipment. Might be your daddy needs it, maybe you. Dean, he was –" There's a pause, and Sam can almost hear Joe thinking about how to go on. "Wanna say he was pissed, but it wasn't just that. Looked like a man came straight from a funeral."

"Thanks, Joe," Sam makes himself say. His voice echoes in his ears, sounding very far away. "I appreciate it."

"No thanks needed. You boys and your daddy, you're like family. Tried to tell Dean as much, but he wasn't listening. Wasn't listening to nothing when I saw him. Had his mind made up."

"Yeah, I – see that."

"Come on over to the shop if you have the chance. Hell, I'll give John the gear, don't need no money. Gave Dean what it was worth and a bit more. Figured he might could use it."

"Thanks."

"Keep me posted, Sammy. Tell that asshole father of yours to keep his head down."

"Will do."

* * *

Dad doesn't come out of Dean's room. Sam looks around a couple of times, hovers but doesn't hear anything from outside the door. His bum hip is killing him, and finally he retreats back to his own room, shuts the door and swallows a couple of pills before he lies down. There's too much to think about. Dean, and Joe's weird story, and no possession, no, this is all DEAN, Dean's idea, Dean's crazy plan to get the hell out of Dodge. And no more idea of why than when Sam first discovered his absence.

He closes his eyes and presses his hands to his closed lids.

At some point the pills kick in, and Sam draws a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh, and opens his eyes to the flicker of candlelight.

He sits up sharply, bracing himself for a snarl of pain in his pelvis. But he feels fine, feels normal. He's no longer in the motel room. This is a place he doesn't know, a wide soft bed in a dim room, candles flickering in a tiny draft and casting darting shadows on the dark bedspread.

His heart takes a tremendous startled leap in his chest. He is somewhere ELSE, and if this is a dream it is the most vivid, real dream he's ever experienced. The room smells like wax and dust and a faint, tangy odor, like oranges mixed with turpentine. It's bracing, rather pleasant.

Outside the heavy wooden door something moans, and Sam leaps from the bed, comes to an instinctive crouch against the wall. The plaintive moan comes again, farther away, and his hand trembles as he turns the glass doorknob, reaches for a gun that is not stuffed in the back of his jeans.

When he looks outside, he sees a blaze of electric light, sconces in neat rows down an long paneled hallway. A man stands a few feet to his left. Dark hair heavily salted with silver, gleaming in the light. Tall and a bit heavyset, wearing an immaculate dark suit.

The man's eyes meet Sam's, unsurprised, calm and level. Generous mouth quirks in a tiny smile, and then he turns away, walking with measured steps down the hall.

Sam follows, feet noiseless on the heavy carpet. The terrible moaning is coming from ahead, in front of the man he trails, emanating from an open doorway at the end of the hall.

The man stops short of going inside, and swivels his head to look again at Sam. "It's done," he says. His voice is deep, plummy, the trained tone of an actor, or an orator. "This is all there is."

"Who are you?" Sam asks, but hears nothing. The man smiles again, tiredly, and walks through the doorway.

Sam puts his hand on the door frame, and then squints as his eyes are flooded with hot red light. There is no room, nothing at all, and he can barely see the man standing suspended over nothing, his sad, peculiarly sweet smile still in place. "This is all there has ever been," he tells Sam, and nods once, firmly.

"Give me your hand!" Sam calls, leaning forward and reaching out. "I can catch you."

The man looks away, up at the endless stretch of hot red light overhead, and falls.

Sam is screaming, but the room is pushing him back, receding as he reels back down the cool neat hallway, and a door slams, leaving him in utter silence. The pressure stops as abruptly as it began, and he flails and stumbles, falling to his knees. But the hall is still receding, faster and faster, and now he feels himself passing through walls, careening backwards while he sits still. Nausea clenches his gut, and he claps his hands over his mouth while the hallway becomes a lightning-fast glimpse of a blue-papered room, then a paneled study, faster until his eyes can't even see the rooms as they pass.

Blue sky overhead, trees and a house. Two houses, one overlaid upon the other, and Sam tastes vomit in his throat and draws a breath to scream, STOP, and sits up on his hard motel bed in time to bend forward and throw up on his own jeans-clad legs.

* * *

He doesn't sleep that night, not enough to matter, and it doesn't surprise him when his father pounds on his door. Of course it's Dad; there's nothing polite about this knocking, it's brusque and insensitive and everything Dad IS.

So he isn't entirely unprepared to face the tight look on John Winchester's face, drawn and angry and not softened by gray early-morning light.

"What did you do?"

Sam meets his stare without flinching and says, "I've been waiting for you to say that."

When he turns he can feel Dad on his heels, anger like a hot dry wind at his back. "What happened? Everything, Sammy, I want it all."

Sam grabs his discarded tee and shrugs into it. "So you can make this into my fault, is that it? What did I do to make Dean go?" He turns and sees Dad's flushed face. "Isn't that what you're really asking?"

"God damn it, Sa –"

"No, see, I knew it would come down to this. Dean's gone, and I'm still here, so it's gotta be something I did. Only here's the thing, Dad," Sam spits, feeling his heart take a quick two-step in his chest. "I didn't DO anything. DEAN left, Dean's the one who sold his shit and his CAR and beat it. I had NOTHING to do with that."

And even as he says it, a little thrill of horrified wonder: Is that exactly the truth? The echo of Dean's ice-cold voice – _let go, or we're done, Sam, all the way, I will shoot you myself_ – and Sam shivers and shakes his head, and doesn't know which he's denying, his father or himself.

"You telling me you sat around and did nothing while –" Dad swallows and moves back into Sam's space, tight with menace. "You LET him go?"

"I didn't KNOW," Sam snaps. "If I'd KNOWN, then –"

"What? What would you have done? See, I really wanna know, Sammy. Because from where I'm sitting it looks like jack SHIT, and I didn't RAISE you two to –"

"Oh, and there we go," Sam says viciously. "Wanna talk about how you raised us? Let's talk about how you raised DEAN never to show any emotion, how's that for starters? You think he'd tell me how he was feeling? Do you even KNOW him? After that demon he was –"

"What demon?" Dad stares at him, frozen in place. "Where?"

Sam swallows and continues, "When I got shot. There was a demon. Just – this thing, we were trying to exorcise it. Minor, it wasn't very strong. The guy, it was using this guy."

"Tell me," Dad says woodenly. "What happened."

Sam sags down on the edge of his bed. "It shot me. And it said something to Dean. I don't know what. I asked him; he wouldn't tell me."

"You should have MADE him tell you, god DAMN it, Sam, this is important!"

"You think I don't get that? I TRIED. All right, Dad? I tried, and it was like talking to a brick wall, okay?"

His father hasn't backed down an inch. Now, moving so close Sam can feel his breath on his face, he says, "Where did he go? Where would he have gone?"

"I don't know," Sam whispers, shaking his head. "I wish I did, oh God, I wish –"

"I don't give a damn what you WISH," Dad spits, lips curling. "You let your brother walk away, and." He stops, swallows audibly and takes a step back, and that's when Sam realizes his father's been standing over him with hands clenched into fists. "Useless," Dad whispers. "All of it. Useless."

He watches his father turn his back, walk with leaden footsteps to the open door, and then Sam says, "I dreamed. Last night."

Dad doesn't turn.

"You missed a lot, you know." Sam stands, ignoring the tiresome yowl in his hip. "Staying away like you did. Missed lots of things. Did you know we solved a couple of cases from my dreams?"

Now Dad does look back, face set in stolid lines. "Dreams," he says flatly.

Sam nods. "Yeah, Dad. Dreams. Only what I saw in some of my dreams actually came true. It happened, just like I'd seen it. And a couple of times we were able to change it." He lifts his chin. "I saw Dean die once. I stopped that from happening. Where were you? What good did YOU do him, huh?"

"Sam, if this isn't going someplace that'll help, I swear to God I'll –"

"What, disown me? Been there, done that," Sam snaps.

"Did you see him?" Dad asks woodenly.

"No."

"Fuck, then –"

"It doesn't even – register with you, does it?" Sam snorts, shakes his head. "I have VISIONS, Dad! Not just when I'm asleep. Don't you get it? It has to be something about Dean. It HAS to."

Dad's mouth works, while he stands in the doorway regarding Sam as distantly as something he just ran over on the highway. "It registers," he says after a long moment. "How does it help?"

"I saw something. In my dream, a house. This guy, older guy."

"Who?"

"I don't know, but I can find out. I can, Dad, and it's connected, I KNOW it is."

Dad's still looking at him, but his eyes are faraway, seeing but not seeing, and Sam swallows rage and grief and old, bitter frustration and says, clearly, "I can do this, Dad. I can figure it out. These dreams – visions – they're always tied in with our family, somehow. I saw -- I saw Jess's death before it happened."

He has to clear his throat, and sees his father's dark eyes, watching, unreadable. "I had – dreams about her," Sam says hoarsely. "I couldn't stop it then, but now I know, I KNOW that these visions mean something, something important. Last night -- I know that dream was related to Dean. Somehow."

"Maybe," his father says gruffly, but his expression cycles from hope to doubt and then to fear, and Sam feels a chill shimmy up his spine.

"What aren't you telling me?" he asks. "I mean, you got in my face, but what about you? Do you know? You know why he split?"

And down comes the portcullis, so much like Dean. "We gotta get a move on. Grab your gear."

"Where are we going? You haven't even told me what –"

Dad's look is sharp, the old familiar "that's on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know" glance Sam remembers from his childhood. "To see a friend. You want to sit around and mope later, fine, but stow it for now."

"He's your SON," Sam whispers.

"I'm aware of that," Dad snaps. "So what do you want me to do? Sit down and cry about it? I haven't got the time for it, and neither do you. We have to MOVE. Now. Got it?"

Sam forces a stiff nod. "Yes, sir," he whispers tightly.

He takes his time packing, though. To see a friend, but not all of his father's friends are people he wants to see again, and he can't think of any who'd know what the hell is going on with Dean. Even after he's stowed all his gear he prowls the room, ignoring the weary ache of his body, looking under the beds, the dresser, checking the bathroom cabinet.

It's only when he hears his father clearing his throat outside that it hits him. This is the last place he saw Dean. And leaving -- He closes his eyes briefly, presses his lips together and pushes it all down. It's only a place. And he will see Dean again. There is no other option.

He puts his duffel in the trunk of the Impala and slams the lid. "So where to?" he asks.

Dad shrugs and brushes past him. "Isn't far. Somebody with some answers, maybe."

"And who might that be?"

"You'll see," Dad says briefly, and unlocks the truck. The slam of the door makes Sam flinch, and when he reaches out to open the Impala his hand shakes so much he almost drops his keys.

* * *

TBC. EB. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**15.**

"I wouldn't say it if I were you."

Sam meets Missouri's level gaze and rolls his eyes. "W –"

"Yes, you were." She reaches up to pat his cheek, the last pat hard enough to make his eye water just a little. "It ain't in his nature to talk much, Sam, you know that."

"Yeah, but he could have told me we were coming to see YOU."

"Could have. But you're here, ain't you? Either way, works out the same."

He wants to complain that it's NOT the same, that his father is treating him like a child, or worse, a piece of luggage that's heavy and unwanted. But with Missouri there's no need; she reads him like a book, reads everyone, and all of a sudden he's just knee-shakingly glad they're here.

He meets her steady dark gaze, and she shakes her head minutely. He's too poised for bad news; he can't tell what that means, bad news, worse news.

"He's – all right. Isn't he?" Sam whispers.

Missouri takes his wrist in a loose grip. "Come on inside. I'll tell you both what I seen. Saves time."

Dad's already in the house, pacing the living room like a caged wolf, constantly looking for an escape route. Sam halts at the doorway. He'd first seen this house with Dean at his side, Dean who was so terribly reluctant, burdened with memories – house, family, mother – that Sam has never been able to share. Now Sam wants to look around, see where Dean went. He must be here, just down the hall, in the head maybe. Backyard. Just out of sight.

Dad completes a circuit of the living room and comes alongside him. His eyes are puffy, tired and shadowy. He looks old, somehow, and heavy with dread. He says nothing to Sam. Blinks, stares down at the carpet. And trudges on another lap of the small room.

"Come on, sugar," Missouri says behind Sam. "Sit down."

He sits on a worn chair, hunched forward, trying not to watch his father's restless motion. Missouri settles herself on the sofa and gives Dad a sour look. "That rug's already worn out, John. Don't need you wearing another groove in it. Sit yourself down."

Dad circles wearily to the sofa and sits, and Sam sees in the tension of his posture the same readiness for action he feels in his own bones. The need to DO something, hunt, chase, FIND.

The only difference is the quarry. Other than that slight, gigantic fact, it could be any hunt.

Missouri's unsmiling face is kind, sad eyes flicking between her two visitors. "Knew you were coming, so I've been seeing what I could see," she says.

"Where is he?" Dad asks hoarsely.

"I don't know."

The wounded look on Dad's face matches the sudden icy clench over Sam's heart. "You can't see him?" Sam whispers.

"Not no more. I could, up till a few days ago." She shakes her head. "Then it's like he fell off the map. Saw him talking to you," she says, watching Sam carefully. "An argument. And then it was like –" She breaks off, gesturing. "He went behind a veil."

Dad gives her a sharp look. "A veil? What the hell does that mean?"

"You keep a respectful tone in my house, John Winchester."

He nods, but he's watching her intently, and after a second she sighs. "Don't mean much, except I can't see him anymore. He's – obscured from my sight."

Sam shakes his head. "What does that mean?"

"Could be a few things. Could be he's found some kinda way to hide himself from me. But there's only one person I know in your family who could do that, and it ain't Dean."

Sam nods, ignoring the quick scrutiny from his father. "Dean's not – gifted that way."

"No." Missouri presses her lips together. She isn't looking at Sam, but at his father. "He ain't."

"What else could it mean?" Dad asks in a raw voice.

"Someone's hidden him from me, maybe. From onlookers like me. Or, well."

Sam watches her draw a deep breath, and his stomach turns, a quick nauseating flip. "Or what?" he whispers.

"Or he's passed on," she admits.

Dad shoots to his feet, hands flexing at his sides. "Dean isn't dead." He spits the words like bullets, glaring down at Missouri. "If he were d -- I'd know if he were."

Missouri's gaze is very calm. "Would you, John?"

Sam looks between them, frowning. They're watching each other, a caged wolf in a zoo and a steady, resolute attendant, a face-off they've had before, he thinks absently. This is not the first time they've clashed. Far from it.

"For what it's worth," Missouri continues evenly, still watching Dad, "I don't think he's dead. But what this means –" She sighs and finally glances at Sam. "Means you're on your own, baby. Your brother is off my radar now. Ain't no way for me to tell where he is now. Except maybe you can."

"I – haven't seen him." Sam swallows and shakes his head. He's aware that Dad is sitting down again, listening, but he has no room for anyone but Missouri right now. "I dreamed last night. But not about him."

"Are you sure? You're learning by now, sometimes what you see is murky. You gotta push through it, see to the heart of it. Things ain't always as they appear."

"I know that. I just -- I don't know what it means. Not yet."

She nods. "You'll figure it out. Think on it."

"Sam says he has visions." Dad sounds like he has a sore throat, and his face is expressionless, his look at Sam bluntly assessing. "You think he can see Dean when you can't?"

"I think Sam's gifts are different from mine. For one thing, he's more powerful than I am."

Dad looks away. "I need something I can use. To find my boy."

"That's what we all want, Dad," Sam whispers. "Okay?"

Dad stands, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. "Got a couple people to see," he says brusquely. "Missouri, can you – help Sammy? With this – vision stuff?"

She's watching him again, eyes narrowed. "I can try."

Dad nods once, curtly. "I'll be back later."

When he reaches the doorway Missouri says, "John."

He stops so fast he almost skids.

"Ain't gonna find your boy where you're going."

"Get out of my head," he whispers, turning to give her a look so filled with anguish Sam draws back into his chair. "Missouri."

"Only gonna find what you seek by looking forward. Not back. It's history, John. Regrets ain't gonna save him."

He stares at her, and swallows, and then says, "You have your ways. I have mine."

"Ain't mine got you into this mess."

Dad doesn't say anything to that, but there's very little anger in his eyes. Far less than Sam expects. He nods, and goes out.

Sam glances at Missouri. "What was that about?"

Her smile is slow and patient. "It's not my place to say, child. He's carrying a heavy load. Has, for longer than you've been on this earth. His place to decide whether or not he wants to share it."

"Do you think Dean's dead?"

She takes so long to reply, Sam's can feel his hands growing icy cold. "If he isn't dead," she finally says, "he's in a whole lot of trouble, Sam. More than you or your daddy knows."

"I have to find him. I – feel it, you know? If I don't find him soon –"

"What?" Missouri frowns. "Tell me, what is it you feel?"

"My dream," he says unsteadily. "The house, in my dream. It wasn't just a house. It was more than that, much more."

She nods encouragement. "How much more?"

He rubs his hands over his knees, aimless, restless. "It sounds crazy," he whispers.

"Don't assume. Maybe to your daddy. Not to me."

"It – wants us to think it's a house. But it's not. It's – a passageway."

Missouri doesn't smile, doesn't shake her head. "To where, child?"

"I don't know. But – Missouri, Dean's there. In that house. He must be." He gestures helplessly. "I don't see HIM, but I see that house. That – menace. And there's a man there."

"Who is he?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know yet."

"You love him, don't you, Sam?"

"Who, Dean?" He blinks at her. "Of course I do. He's my brother, I mean, of course I love him."

"You hold onto that. Just as hard and as fierce as you can."

"I – I will, why –"

"It ain't for me to say." Her look is as grim as he's ever seen, even during the cleansing of their old house. She looks older, harder. "Just you remember that. The love you two have for each other. It'll get you through."

Puzzled, he stares at her. "I believe that, too. Dean, he's -- That's what makes all of this so crazy. Why would he leave? Missouri, if you know –"

Her smile is as quick and brilliant as the first time he saw her, the darkness gone. "I bet you're hungry. You want something to eat?"

"Right now?" He hesitates. "It's not really the best ti –"

"I made meatloaf last night, whole lot of extra. How about a meatloaf sandwich? Best you've ever had, or my name ain't Missouri Moseley."

* * *

Missouri's food is as good as promised. And after lunch, although it's early, Sam feels himself drifting, unable to focus his mind. He's tired, more than last night's poor sleep can account for, and Dad hasn't come back from whatever self-dictated errand he's on. The house is quiet and comfortable, and the second time he starts nodding over his laptop Missouri comes to the doorway of the living room and says, "You need some sleep, child. You wearing yourself out ain't gonna help your brother." 

He nods, and lets her lead him down the hall to a small neat bedroom. "You have a nap," Missouri tells him. "And when your daddy gets back, we'll have ourselves another talk."

Sam peers at her. "You know, don't you? Why he left?"

Her hand is cool and firm on his wrist. "What I know don't matter," she says softly. "Things are the way they are. Can't live in the past, even if your father sometimes tries. All folks like me and you got is the here and now." She smiles, and gives his wrist a squeeze. "You get some rest."

The bed is soft and good-smelling, and he thinks even then he won't be able to sleep, and closes his eyes.

The man is smoking a cigar. Not a foul-smelling stogie: a heavy, sweetly delicious aroma, like oak and cherries macerated in brandy. "Limited run," he tells Sam, twirling the long cylinder in the air and smiling. He appears a tiny bit younger than in the earlier dream, easier in his skin. He is strikingly handsome. "Special order, $500 a box. Worth every penny."

Sam is dressed in a suit, light summer wool, pale gray. He stares down at himself and says, "Who are you?"

"Have one." The man leans forward to open a wooden box. "Take a couple. Good for the digestion."

Sam takes a cigar, rolling it between his fingers. It feels real, solid. "No one ever answers my questions. Not Missouri. Not you."

The man gestures, and they are in a hallway. The hallway Sam remembers, long and empty and at the end, oblivion. The cigars are gone.

"What was it all for?" the man whispers, eyes beseeching. He shakes his head slowly. "For this? Was this all?"

Sam opens his mouth to ask what he means, what is "this," the house, what, and stiffens at the sound of a child's cry. Far-off, thin and frantic. A baby, wailing. Hungry, or maybe a wet diaper. Or maybe something else, something terrible is happening. Pain, loss. Fear.

The man claps his hands over his ears, his face crumbling in anguish. "For this," he says urgently, eyes closed. "Oh, for this."

Sam reaches out, but the man is receding, drawn backwards down the hall, and when Sam lurches forward the man's eyes open. "This is all there ever has been," he says, and smiles, and falls back into the flames.

* * *

He's awake and restlessly paging through Google search hits when his father returns. The bang of the front door, murmured conversation. Sam pauses, and shakes his head before he scrolls down again. 

It is a massive house. He has seen it, twice now, and he knows it's camouflage. A grand house, a tremendous residence, an estate really. Sprawling, opulent, throbbing with wrongness.

None of the National Registry houses look familiar. So many of them, so much to look at, and nothing resonates. He will KNOW the house when he sees it. And seeing the house is the next step to finding Dean.

"Sam?"

He flinches and looks around. Missouri gives him an easy smile. "Sleep all right? Don't answer that, I see you did, a little."

"I saw it," Sam croaks. "The house. The guy."

"Course you did." Her smile doesn't waver. "You'll find him, child. Never a doubt in my mind. I'm going to church now. It's Wednesday."

"A-all right."

"There's food in the icebox. TV dinners, if you want to heat them up, or meatloaf. Got sandwich makings, too. Help yourself."

"Thanks."

"Your daddy's back."

Sam gives a short nod. "Figured."

"Good luck," she whispers, and vanishes back down the hall.

He turns to his computer, but the sight of so many vague, aimless hits just makes him feel weary all over again. The face, the man – who is he? Is it his house? It must be, and if Dean is there – what is the connection? Why would Dean be drawn there?

He powers down the laptop and stands, grunting at the renewed ache in his stiff hip. Movement is good, moving will loosen things up. He can't afford to be gimpy now. There isn't time.

The house is murky with early-evening light. In the shadowy living room his father sits on the sofa, silent, something rectangular in his hands.

"Dad?" Sam asks cautiously. "You okay?"

His father says nothing. Doesn't move.

"You want something to eat? Missouri left –"

"No."

Sam sucks on his lower lip and steps into the room. He squints, and makes out a picture frame in his father's hands. "Did you get something? Find what you were looking for?"

Dad runs his hand over the edge of the frame. Sam can't see the photograph it holds. "I took this," he says in a rusty voice. "That night. It survived the fire, somehow, I never found out how. Found it lying on the lawn the next morning."

Sam edges over to the chair and sits. "Can I see?"

Dad says nothing, but holds it out, and Sam takes the frame carefully. It's a child, a baby really. Maybe nine months old, ten, something. Round face, rosebud lips pursed in a quizzical look. A puff of white-blond hair on its head.

"Is that me or Dean?" Sam asks, smiling a little.

Dad doesn't say anything right away, and when Sam looks at his father he sees he is crying. Silently, motionlessly, a steady leak of tears.

"Even before we got married," Dad says, "your mother and I, we knew we wanted kids. Both of us, not just her, or me. Both of us." He swallows, studying his linked hands in his lap. "Didn't know anything else, really. Where we'd live, all that. Her apartment was bigger than mine, so after we got married I moved my stuff there."

Sam nods.

His father reaches up to wipe away tears, absently, as if he doesn't quite realize the motion. "We started looking for a house, you know. For the family we wanted to have. And we saw a couple we liked, talked to the realtor, the bank. The first one we tried for, we lost. Somebody got it already."

He goes silent, and then stands, walking toward Sam and plucking the photograph out of his hands, pressing it to his chest as he goes on to stand by the window. The apricot evening light limns his profile, warms and shines on his wet cheeks.

"I got home from work one night the next week, and Mary, she'd made this incredible dinner. Roast beef, potatoes, even made dessert." Dad smiles, thumb stroking the edge of the frame in his hands. "I kept asking, what's the occasion. But it wasn't until after dinner that she told me."

"She was pregnant," Sam whispers.

His father nods. "We were both so happy. See, it's what we wanted. What we both wanted." He swallows visibly, still staring out the window at nothing. "So we really started looking then. We had a family on the way, we needed more space. A nursery.

"She was so beautiful. Pregnant. You hear people say, you know, she has a glow, but it was the God's honest truth. I've never seen anyone more beautiful in my life. My wife," Dad whispers. "And our child. I knew right then, you know? Every day. I am the luckiest son of a bitch living."

Sam's throat aches, but he smiles, because he can almost see it himself. His parents, and their love for that bump that was going to be their firstborn. Dean.

His father's smile fades. He clasps the frame more tightly, nods to himself. "And one day I came home a little early. Don't know why, never have known. Just did. And Mary was asleep, looking so peaceful and beautiful. She woke up and said, 'John, there's something wrong.'"

Sam's smile fades. "What happened?" he whispers.

Dad coughs something harsh, something that Sam can barely tell is a sob. "I took her to the hospital. They wouldn't tell me anything, made me wait for fucking hours. I was going crazy. Finally the doctor came out and he said, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester. We did everything we could.'"

He's moving suddenly, pacing the room again, forcing Sam to sit up and turn, watching his restless idiotic motions. "Dad?" Sam asks hoarsely.

"They let us see him. Before." His father coughs another sharp sob, lumbering past Sam's chair. "Seven months along, so he -- He looked like a real baby. Just sleeping. So many babies, when they're born they're all red, and heads dented, but not ours. He was perfect. Ten fingers and ten toes, and so pretty."

"Dad," Sam breathes, so soft he can hardly hear it himself. His heart has sped up, thumping an agitated rhythm inside his chest. His ears are ringing a little.

"We went back to Topeka for the funeral. Mary, she wanted to bury him next to her mother. They had – a family plot there. Where your mother was from."

"It – wasn't Dean." He has an older brother he's never heard of. His hands are tingling.

"We named him Joseph. Mary's dad's name. Joseph Monroe Winchester. I never went back. Not after the funeral. Mary wanted to, but I didn't let her. It's the past, I told her. Let it go."

But where was Dean? Sam wants to ask. Dean was your firstborn. Not Joseph.

His father pauses at the window again. The light has become shades of hazel and blue, and his profile is dim and hard to make out.

"She was so sad after that. I tried -- I tried to get her to look at houses, but she kept saying not now, maybe later. She called in sick to work, slept so much. It was like – all her light had gone out. Losing the baby. We'd buried her light with him."

Sam is so cold. It's warm in the house, outside, but he's chilled, frozen in place while his father nods, nods to himself. I don't want to hear this, Sam thinks suddenly. Cold and sure as winter. I don't want it. Take it back.

"Dad –"

"The doctors, they said probably she couldn't have any more kids. Some kinda – genetic thing. They'd die about the same time Joseph did. Die inside her, like he did." Dad swallows, pets the frame. "Months, and she got a little better, but not like she was. We had fights, stupid stuff, the apartment and the car. My job. Things weren't so good.

"And so I said one night, We could still have kids. We both still want them."

"No," Sam says sullenly. Staring down at his hands clenched together. "No, Dad."

His father doesn't hear. Spitting out the words as if each weighs an individual ton, heavy and forbidden. "I started out just asking questions. Talking to people. All the forms we had to fill out. Tests. Felt like I was in the Corps again, everything in triplicate.

"Got us on a list. And Mary started acting like herself again. Excited, like the life came back into her eyes."

Sam holds out his hands, registers their trembling. No, he thinks. Oh no.

"And we got this call, from this woman we'd been working with. Wanted us to meet somebody. So I picked up Mary and we drove out there."

His father sobs suddenly, loud like a cough from a man dying of pneumonia, and Sam looks up sharply, angrily. "He was so beautiful," Dad whispers. "Perfect. We took one look at him and Mary said to me, 'That's our son, John.' And he was, right then. Just, our son."

"No," Sam says, standing on trembling legs. "You – No."

Dad's look is gentle, beseeching. His teeth glint white in the growing darkness. "All the rest, see. It was just paperwork. Getting things out of the way. We couldn't – take him home then. It was a couple of months before. But – he was ours, don't you see? Even before we brought him home. We bought that house. Didn't have it fixed up all the way before we went to get him, but mostly. Worked my ass off, made it the best I could. For him. And her."

"He's my BROTHER," Sam says brokenly, and backs away.

"Dean was my grandfather's name. Dean, and his middle name was Mary's granddad, Michael. Dean Michael Winchester. He was OURS."

Sam bumps into the table, stops and shakes his head.

"He was perfect," Dad whispers. "And then she got pregnant. We thought -- I was scared, so scared. Couldn't stand to see her go through it again, another child. But she told me, right after she found out, Shhh." He puts a finger to his lips. "Shhh. It'll be all right, she said. Trust me. I know. It won't happen this time."

"Daddy," Sam wheezes without strength. "Aw, Dad."

"And it didn't. You were fine. More than fine, you were perfect, too. And Dean loved you, couldn't wait for you to come home, to teach you all the things –"

His father takes a deep, sawing breath and drops his head forward, places his forehead against the framed picture and blurts, "Dean. Oh, Dean."

Sam's face is cold, too, cold as his hands, and when he brings his fingers up to touch his cheeks they're wet.

"My boy," his father cries, and sags to his knees, sharp and fast as a puppet with the strings suddenly cut. "He's my BOY. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, DEAN." Bending forward, clasping the picture to his breast and sobbing.

Sam draws a fast breath, cold as Antarctic wind, and turns and stumbles out.

* * *

_TBC. EB._


	16. Chapter 16

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**16.**

He has no idea where he's going. His hip hurts, and every step is a reminder of why that pain exists: the demon, the shooting, the aftermath, the slow awareness that Dean was changing, changing. Thinking, Dean is not your brother. You had a brother, and he died before he ever took a single breath of air. He died and was buried and you never heard his name spoken aloud until tonight.

He scrubs at his face with both hands, finds unsurprising tears. Nothing is as he's believed. Nothing at all.

It's dark outside, light from the street lamps weak and watery, and the curb comes out of nowhere. Tripping up his gimpy leg, making him stumble, catching himself with outflung hands and dropping to the pavement. Gravel bites into his palms. It feels sharp and stark, shocking him, grounding him.

Joseph. Would he have been Joey? Joe? Would he have been tall, maybe tall as Sam, dimpled like Sam and their father? Would Joe have done for Sam what Dean did, growing up? Watched out for him, teased him, waited for him after school? Or would he have been different?

Would he have loved Joseph as he loves Dean?

It doesn't matter. Joseph is dead, Joseph never had a chance, and Dean is his brother. His real brother, in spite of blood. It's all Sam can cling to.

But his mouth tastes bitter as he levers himself awkwardly to his feet, hisses at the snarl of his tired hip. He needs PT, needs to be exercising that joint regularly, slow and even instead of these fits and starts. He needs to get his mobility back, because there is no question – no question at all – that he needs it. Cannot afford to be without it.

He turns to look back at the house. Homely house, with only a light in the kitchen. Dad hasn't turned on the living-room lamps. Is he still weeping? On the floor, clasping Dean's baby picture like the only remaining talisman of his adopted son?

His stomach roils, flirting with nausea, settling into acid burning. He limps back, teeth clenched, and feels the pain in the house the moment he touches the doorknob. His father grieving, like a sweet poisonous gas in the air. He doesn't glance into the living room on his way past. Down the hallway to the small guest bedroom, shutting the door firmly and slumping on his bed.

Nothing is what he's believed. He can see Dean's face in his mind, see that unfathomable pain in his eyes and now Sam is starting to grasp where that agony came from, stepping to the brink of Dean's chasm and peering over. Dean, who has always been about family, about his father and his brother, his beloved, adored family.

The irony of it strikes him like a whiplash, and he covers his mouth to muffle his gasping, shocked laugh. It is not humorous, it is staggering in its unfairness, and yet all he wants to do suddenly is laugh. How insane is it all? DEAN, of all people, Dean who is the adopted one, and not Sam, who is, has always been, different.

He flops back on the mattress, knuckles pressed against his teeth, curling up and wheezing giggles until one tear squeezes its way out, and another. And then he's crying, silent gulping sobs that come from someplace so deep inside he can't understand it at all, can't bear to think that Dean could have left because maybe he didn't believe he WAS John's son, that he was Sam's brother.

* * *

There are no dreams. He opens his eyes to cheery sunshine, squints and rubs his swollen eyes and for a moment he can't remember where he is. Palo Alto, and Jess making coffee in the kitchen? Humming that stupid song she likes so much, the one that gets into his head and won't leave for love or money?

Or maybe it's Dean doing the coffee thing. Too groggy to hum his Metallica, hair a spectacular vertical bedhead construction.

But Jess is dead, and this isn't home. This is someone else's home, someone else's bed, and Dean is gone.

His eyes burn, worse when he rubs them. His head aches with an old familiar hangover: the residue of weeping, sinuses all blocked and a hundred tiny construction workers using jackhammers in his forehead. He sits up, listening, and hears the faint murmur of voices: radio, probably, and he can smell coffee after all. Missouri's strong black coffee.

He's slept in his clothes, and he changes into fresh jeans and a tee shirt before going out to the bathroom, splashing water on his face and resolutely ignoring how bloodshot his eyes are. He feels fragile, as if any unconsidered move will shatter his bones, and he moves carefully, peeing and washing his hands and brushing his teeth.

Missouri smiles at him from her seat at the kitchen table. If she is shocked by what happened in her house while she was gone last night, she doesn't show it. "Coffee's made," she says. "Feel like some breakfast?"

Sam moves slowly, shakes his head while he fills a mug with coffee. "No, thanks." His voice startles him: hoarse and gravelly, much deeper than normal. "Where's my father?"

"Honey, I don't know."

Pausing with the mug halfway to his lips, Sam stares at her. "You didn't see him? Last night?"

"I came in late. We had a special speaker at the church last night, a Mr. Ames from a big church down in Texas. You heard of him?"

"No. Missouri, we –" Sam sets the untasted cup of coffee on the table and lowers himself gingerly into a chair. "He told me. Everything."

Missouri gives a slow nod. "Yes, child," she says softly. "I know."

"I've never seen my dad cry before." Sam stares down into his cup, the vibrations of the table making minute ripples. "You said, last night. You asked me if I loved my brother. Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's –"

"No. I know." Sam closes his eyes, presses his fingers against his burning eyelids. "It wasn't your place."

"No."

"It was his. He –" Sam stares at her, swallowing hard. "He should have told us. Him. Dean. It – shouldn't have been a secret."

Missouri drinks from her own mug and shakes her head. "Maybe not. If it's answers you want, Sam, I don't got them. Your daddy and me, we go back a ways, I guess you know. Since you were in diapers and your brother all big eyes and no talking. Didn't talk for the longest time after your mama passed, did you know that?"

Sam nods slowly.

"Wasn't ever a moment I doubted that both of you boys were that man's sons." Her eyes are keen, boring into him. "Now, finding out like you both have, it's hard. That Dean, I don't need to read him now to know he took it hard. Took it BAD."

"You saw it – when he found out. Didn't you?"

"Wasn't going looking for it. But I always kept an eye out for your family, even when you were all far away. Best I could." Missouri sighs. "Something happened, couple, three weeks ago. May have been when he started to find out. Pain that big, ain't no hiding it."

"But he did," Sam says in a strangled voice. "He hid it from ME. All that time. I never saw it, I never –"

"Baby, you may be the gifted one in your family, but Dean's got his own ways of dealing." Missouri's voice sharpens, although her expression is warm. "You had your own mess to handle, your own fear. And your brother wears many masks. Always has, you know that. Does it surprise you so much that you couldn't see behind it, this time?"

"I should have seen it," Sam manages. "He needed me."

"Still does. More than ever."

"I don't even know where he is."

"You'll find him. No doubt in my mind. You'll find him."

* * *

Missouri makes sandwiches at noon, and Sam manages to force most of one down by the time he hears the low rumble of his father's truck through the window.

It's a brilliant, golden day, and Sam stands with his arms hanging loose at his sides, watching Dad climb out of the truck. Wearing yesterday's clothes, his face lined and unhealthy under his tan.

His father stops, seeing Sam, and they stare at each other. Then Dad clears his throat and says, "You look like hell."

Sam swallows. "Take me to him."

Dad's eyes are dark and shadowed with things Sam cannot read. "I don't know where he is," he says hoarsely.

"Not Dean. My brother. I want to see my brother."

"Dean is your brother," Dad whispers. "Don't –"

"I'm not talking about Dean. Joseph. I want to see the brother you never told me I had."

What color there is in Dad's face is leeching away. He looks exhausted, uncertain, glancing to the side. His throat works, and then he says, still not looking at Sam, "Get in the truck."

* * *

It's a short drive to Topeka, less than an hour with traffic, and they don't speak during the journey. Sam looks at Dad a few times, and more than a few times he can feel Dad's eyes on him. But the cold, hard thing lodged in his chest doesn't budge. He can't extend himself, not for his father, who sat on this information for decades and never doled out the truth. He has to SEE, to have something concrete in front of him, and then --

Then he will know. He will know what to do next.

The cemetery is an old, tree-shaded stretch of green turf, as quiet as these places typically are during the daytime and demurely pretty. His father drives down the meandering little road, past a tremendous oak with branches broad enough to shade the world, and to the right until they pass an ornate crypt bearing the name "McMillan." Just beyond, Dad stops and puts on the parking brake.

"Your mother's people," he says, sounding a little out of breath. "Her mom and dad are just over here."

Sam's legs tremble a little when he climbs out. The air is warm and fragrant with freshly cut grass and clean wood smells. He is familiar with cemeteries, too familiar perhaps, but this one is not a bad place. It feels…restful. He can think of far worse places to sleep.

Dad walks a few paces ahead of him, boots making soft crunches in the gravel, easing into the grass beyond the first rank of Monroe headstones.

"Your grandparents," he says softly, gesturing with his left hand. His ring glints in the filtered sunshine.

Sam glances at the stones, reads the names. He never met his maternal grandparents. They met him, but he was a newborn, and by the time he would have known them John had taken Sam and Dean far away, begun his nomadic quest. He knows only that they died when he was young, and now it does not have much meaning for him. Just stones, in a quiet cemetery.

There is a smaller stone, a few feet away. Dad stops, flexing his hands at his sides. "There."

A small stone for a small body, and Sam approaches slowly, scanning the chiseled words. "Joseph Monroe Winchester. A bud from Earth, bloomed in Heaven. April 19, 1978."

There is only one date. Of course there's only one. His throat aches, and his hip complains when he kneels, reaching out to brush away a few grass clippings. Has anyone ever placed flowers on this grave? Stood over it, felt grief for what might have been? Did his mother stand here, weeping over her lost firstborn? Did his father?

His eyes are dry. This is his brother, but only in name. He touches the stone again, smiles a little, and stands. His father is a few feet away, eyes fixed back the way they've come.

"You bastard," Sam whispers. He licks his dry lips. "After everything he did for you. For this family."

Dad's look is sharp, forbidding. "Have some respect."

"Don't talk to me," Sam snaps, forcing himself to a faster pace, walking by. "I don't want to hear it."

"Don't you TAKE that tone with –"

It is as automatic, as unthinking as breathing. A glance, and his father is thrown backward, a grunt as he hits the ground.

Sam stands stock-still, gaping at what he's done again without thinking, and his father draws a rasping breath and whispers, "All right, Sammy. Show me what you got."

"I didn't -- It doesn't work. Like that."

Dad levers himself up using a tombstone – Jackson Emory Monroe, 1934-1997, He still lingers in our memory – and grins, shakes his head. "Didn't believe it when I heard. Guess it's true, though. You picked up some shiny new skills to add to the tool chest, huh? Well, let's see 'em. You want to take me on? You mad because I didn't tell you your brother was adopted? Your REAL brother? Let's go. Come on."

"I don't want to FIGHT you," Sam says. "You -- You should have TOLD him. Then this wouldn't have happened!"

"What? Dean running away? How do you know? Huh?" Dad stalks up to him, gets right in his face. Up close he smells like beer, like sour sweat and grief. "I didn't tell him because it didn't MATTER! He was my SON. Period!"

"You think HE saw it that way?" Sam snaps. "You weren't there!"

Dad swallows audibly. "You really want to do this?" he asks in a quieter voice. "You want to stand here and shout at each other, beat the shit out of each other? Because I tell you what, I can do that. You can throw me around with your brain, and I can punch the crap out of you, but what the hell does it prove? You're mad at me? So what? What GOOD does it do? How does this help Dean?"

"You – hurt him," Sam gasps. "Hurt him so bad. So bad he ran. From me. From US."

When his father's hand comes out it isn't to strike. Instead his fingers close on Sam's shoulder, squeeze and don't let go. "I know," he says thickly. "And I'm gonna make it right. I swear to God I'll make it right again."

"He'll – never forgive you. Dad."

The grip tightens, and then falls away. His father looks beaten now, resigned. "Maybe not."

"We have to find him."

Dad nods. In the bright dappled light he looks smaller, somehow. Not the all-knowing icon of Sam's childhood, and not the drill-sergeant tyrant of his adolescence. He is shrunken right now, diminished, and the sight fills Sam with dread and a hot tight core of sadness.

"Let's go get my brother," he whispers, and Dad nods again, slowly.

And then sunshine splinters into darkness, and pain like a spear slicing into his brain, and he hears his father shouting his name and strong hands gripping his shoulders, and then here is not HERE anymore but somewhere else.

He knows the man's face now. Softened now with fondness, love, gazing down at a bundle that Sam can't see, knows by its shape.

"What do you think of all this? Hmm?" The man doesn't use baby-talk. A calm, serious voice, his eyes crinkling in a gentle smile. It makes him look younger, full lips curving. "I know, it's kind of overwhelming, isn't it?"

The view opens up, reveals a large, pleasant paneled room, flames snapping briskly in the fireplace. Through a window Sam can see outside, dove-gray sky and heavy snow. The man is dressed in sweater and corduroy slacks, and the firelight glints on the silver in his hair.

"I have to," the man whispers, and the blue blanket shifts, revealing a pink, frowning face. Deep blue infant eyes and a thatch of cornsilk hair, standing up on its head like the crest of some exotic baby bird.

The man – the father – smiles sadly, and looks up. Sam feels that nauseating panoramic jerk of his mind's eye – Vision-Cam, some distant part of his mind crows, it's the Vision-Cam – and sees a young woman holding out her arms. She is painfully plain, face marred by an oblong port-wine stain over her cheek. She is dressed in a white blouse and plain black skirt, old-fashioned, a servant's uniform.

"Please," the man whispers, and the girl nods and scoops the baby into her arms. Sam sees a tiny fist bob over the folds of blue blanket, minuscule fingers clenched in protest, and the man closes his eyes and says, "Now it's –"

"SAM," his father shouts, too close, standing OVER him, and Sam blinks up at him, squinting through sunlight and the swelling throb of a monster headache.

"Whuh," Sam slurs.

"Jesus, Sammy." Dad drops to his knees, his face white and twisted with shock and worry. "Lie still. Just – be quiet, you had some kinda – seiz –"

"Nuh. No." Sam reaches out and twists his fingers into his father's shirt, tugs once. "Not seizure."

Dad swallows and shakes his head. "Looked that way to me, buddy," he says.

"Vi -- Vision. I saw – things."

Sunshine like a halo around his entire body, his father sits back on his heels, frowning. "Things? What things?"

"The man. The house." Sam licks his dry lips and reaches up to press the heels of his hands against his temples. "Shit. He had a baby. In his arms."

Dad's eyes narrow. "What –"

"Girl. There was a girl. First – time. Never seen her."

His father has been anxiously squeezing Sam's shoulder; now his hand pauses, heavy and still on his skin. "Tell me," he rasps.

"Just a glimpse. She was – God." The pain surges forward, and he sits up and leans forward, mouth watering.

"What did she look like?"

"A maid," Sam gasps. "Somethi—"

Dad leans forward, so close Sam can smell his breath. "Her face," he says urgently. "Did she have a mark? Think!"

Sam nods dazedly.

"The baby," his father snaps, and now he's gripping Sam's face, lifting, staring into his watering eyes. "Tell me about the baby."

"Blue – blanket," Sam manages. "Boy."

Dad lets go so fast Sam rocks back. His face goes whiter still, lips pressing into a single pale line.

"Dean," Sam whispers. "It was Dean, wasn't it? And the guy -- The guy I keep seeing, that's his father."

Dad closes his eyes, and Sam shades his eyes from the merciless sun and swallows bile.

* * *

_TBC. EB_


	17. Chapter 17

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2006**

**17.**

Dad is silent driving back to Lawrence, and Sam's head hurts too much to force the issues. Many, many issues, so many it would give him a headache if the vision crap hadn't already taken care of that.

Just past the city limits sign he gasps, "Pull over," and Dad hauls the truck onto the shoulder. There's nothing in Sam's stomach to throw up, but he retches for what feels like about an hour, and when that finally stops, the pain in his head is black and merciless. He's barely aware of his father manhandling him back into the cab of the truck, or the short remainder of the drive.

So many things that need doing, and all he can manage is staggering into Missouri's cool house, leaning so hard on Dad that he might as well be carrying him, smelling Dad's shirt and thinking, That's home, right there, smells like home. In the guest room he slumps bonelessly on the bed and lets Dad take his boots off, pull a quilt over him.

"Does anything help? When it's like this?" Dad's voice is barely a whisper, the noise rasping against Sam's brain like sandpaper.

Eyes closed, Sam licks his lips and tastes vomit. "No," he tries to say. "Leave me alone." Only it emerges sounding like "leemeeluh," and what language is that, anyway? Headache-Speak, maybe; Dean was always good at translating. At not needing a translation at all, knowing what to do before Sam himself.

Dad disappears, and then there's a warm hand on Sam's arm, and the sharp prick of a needle, fast and insignificant. Heat spreads through his veins, comfort, and he sighs and lets it sweep him away.

* * *

The sun is gone when he wakes up. His eyes are gummy with sleep, and he nearly knocks the lamp over trying to hit the switch. The clock says 10:26, no question that's PM.

The headache isn't gone, but it's ramped back down to about a four on a one-to-ten scale, and that's entirely manageable. Thank God. He's got a horrible aftertaste in his mouth, like something died in there, so he crawls off the bed and heads to the bathroom to brush his furry teeth.

He can hear quiet conversation down the hall, and after he's done in the john he walks slowly to join them. Dad and Missouri give him alert looks, like bird-dogs on point, and Sam waves and says, "Hey."

"Feeling better?" Missouri asks. "Want something to eat?"

He's ready to say no, gross, no way, but his stomach growls. "I guess."

Missouri goes to the kitchen, patting Sam's shoulder on the way, and he sits and can't quite look at his father. "You gave me morphine," Sam says hoarsely.

"Way you were puking, no way you'd keep anything down."

Morphine's reserved for the really bad stuff, the life-threatening injuries, the occasional broken bone. He can't remember when he figured out Dad kept some around, but he does remember Dean's teeth through his bloody lower lip, the sounds he'd made when the ghost of Andrew Sims flung him off that landing and bounced him down the stairs. Sam had been twelve and hadn't known what the hell morphine was, but he did know that Dean's legs shouldn't be pointing the directions they were. Dean never screamed, never cried, but the pain in his eyes was unbearable to see.

Dad came back with a little bottle and a syringe, and after a minute or two Dean went limp as a corpse, and Dad carried him to the car and Dean slept through getting his legs splinted. When Sam had asked what that was, Dad said only, "Big guns, Sammy, sometimes you need 'em, even your brother needs 'em."

"Big guns," Sam whispers now, and out of the corner of his eye he sees his father nodding.

"That always happen when you get one of these – visions?"

"Usually a headache, yeah. Can get pretty bad."

"Yeah, I noticed," says his father dryly.

"Who was that guy? The one I saw?"

There's no immediate reply, and when Sam looks Dad is staring away from him, his forehead furrowed. "Dad?"

"You tell me," his father says softly.

"You don't know? Dad, that's Dean's father."

"Never knew who his birth parents were." Dad takes a swallow out of the cup at hand. It's Missouri's house, so it isn't whiskey. Maybe coffee. "He was a foundling, or so Beth said."

Sam frowns. "Who's Beth?"

Dad's eyes are hooded and dark. "You saw her. Big old birthmark on her face."

"She had on a uniform. I'm pretty sure that wasn't his mother."

Dad snorts and looks away again. "Nah. She said she found him. Abandoned. Marcia – that was Dean's caseworker, good lady – she said she thought maybe Beth was his birth mother, but we never found out for sure. I think she was telling the truth."

"I SAW her. Talking to Dean's father. Of course she wasn't telling the truth! Dad, I need all of it. We need it, no secrets, or we're never –"

"I know." Dad gives a single crisp nod. "But I don't have much. Never did. Dean –" His voice shakes, and he clears his throat. "We didn't ask many questions. Mary, she -- You gotta understand, that was love at first sight. She loved him the minute she saw him, loved him like he was her own, and I was just so goddamn happy to see her happy, I didn't." He clears his throat again. "I didn't ask."

"But you met Beth. The lady who said she found him. The woman I just SAW."

"Once. Marcia was with us, just trying to see what else we could find out about him. She said she was on her way back to Kansas – she was from around here, I guess, but she'd been living up east – and she found him at the bus station. Little baby, and nobody around to claim him."

Sam sits back, frowning. "And you bought that?"

"No police reports of missing kids. No parents, nobody around to say he was theirs." His father slumps a little. "Mary said he was a gift from God. All I knew was he made her happy. I didn't much care beyond that."

"Dad, we have to find Beth. Ask her what –"

"She's dead."

Sam stares at him.

"Marcia called us one morning and said the girl who'd found him had died a couple of days before that. Hit by a car."

"And you didn't think that was suspicious or –"

"Jesus, Sam, accidents happen." Dad shakes his head, drinks some of his coffee. "Hadn't even seen her again after that one time. She went back to her folks, and that was it." He gives Sam a sharp look. "What's suspicious? You don't believe in accidents?"

Sam draws a slow careful breath and says, "Let's just say I'm hedging all my bets right now."

Dad nods. Then it's silence, until he says, "They called him a 'discarded infant.'"

"Was he – healthy?"

"Yeah. I mean, whatever happened, Marcia said they believed he'd been very lucky, hadn't been abandoned long."

Sam leans forward. "I'm telling you, there's no way he was abandoned. Where'd she find him?"

"Here. Said she was waiting for her bus, heard him crying. They – whoever, had left him under a bench."

"Who –"

"Who could do shit like that?" There's a sharpness to his father's glance, old anger, rage really. "Hell if I know. But I think that's why there was a push to see him adopted. Find somebody who really wanted him."

"Since nobody else did," Sam whispers.

"Right."

He hears Missouri in the doorway, heavy footsteps probably on purpose. She smiles and says, "Heated you up some stew. Come on and eat."

Sam stands. "Missouri, why -- I saw things. Things about Dean."

"I know, baby."

"What does it mean?"

"I can't say. Wasn't me doing the seeing."

"I saw Dean's father."

Her smile fades. "You saw his sire," she says evenly. "That man right there's his daddy."

"No, I get that. His biological father, all right? I have to find out who he is, don't you see? That's what DEAN is doing." He glances back at Dad, makes a face. "I mean, wouldn't you? Want to know?"

His father levers himself to his feet, doesn't nod or shake his head. "Maybe."

"That's how we'll find him. Find his father, his family, his BIRTH family – and we'll find Dean."

Missouri's hand is cool and dry, touching his wrist. "Come on and eat something," she says. "It's late. You ain't doing any of that tonight."

* * *

Maybe it's the food, maybe it's leftover morphine, but by midnight he's asleep again, and if there are any dreams he doesn't remember them.

He sits up, blinks in the bright sunshine streaming in the east window, and thinks, Five days. Five days since Dean left. Five DAYS.

It's the longest he's been separated from Dean since Palo Alto, and all he can think is that Dean could be anywhere. Anywhere at all. How are they supposed to find him? They have exactly nothing to work with. Can't exactly call up the Kansas State Police and say, See, my brother – well, he isn't my blood brother, my adoptive brother, so DNA won't be any help – ran away from us and we want to find him again. Yes, he's a little old to be called a runaway. Did I mention he's legally dead? Oh. Well, there's that, too.

He says as much to his father over cups of strong coffee, Missouri gone on errands, and Dad halts with his cup halfway to his lips.

"I still know a few people," he says. "Let me see what I can do."

Sam gives him a careful look. "Your kind of people don't usually –"

"This guy's different. He's a cop."

"You know a COP?"

Dad shrugs and looks away. "Did him – his family – a favor a few years back. He owes me."

Sam does not want to know what sort of favor that was. He settles for nodding. "Think he can help –"

This time it's like blinking. No buildup, no transition, and no pain.

The man looks older. Dean's father, Dean's biological father, in a room Sam hasn't seen before.

"I know it's hard," the man says softly. He reaches out and Sam sees his hand clasping someone's shoulder. A boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. Dean's mouth, Dean's cheekbones, darker hair than Dean's. He's a beautiful boy, tall and blue-eyed.

"We just have to do the best we can," the man tells the boy, who doesn't nod. Only watches him, generous mouth tipping in a smile that might really be amused. Sam can't tell.

Then the boy looks straight at him, at Sam, looks and narrows his remarkable eyes and whispers, "I know you." There is nothing in that blue stare; it is as empty and cold as a chunk of pure glacier ice.

Sam gasps and hears a terrible scream, and stares into his father's dark, worried eyes.

"Don't tell me," Dad says. "Another damn vision."

"He did something," Sam whispers. "The boy. He did something to Dean's father."

"What boy?" Dad frowns. "What did you see?"

Sam swallows and tastes coffee like asbestos on his tongue. There is no headache, not yet. "I think," he begins, and shakes his head. "I think Dean's father is dead." And thinks, The eyes. Remember that. That's how you'll know him when you see him again. Those dead cold blue eyes. He can smile all he wants, be beautiful – and he'll be beautiful, as beautiful as Dean, oh yes – but none of that will touch his eyes. No laugh lines. Remember his eyes.

"Sammy."

He draws a breath and nods. "Yeah."

"You tell me now, son. You off your game? Because we don't know what we're gonna find, and –"

Dad doesn't go on. He meets Sam's narrow gaze, then looks away. "I've seen what this vision stuff does to you," he says in a hoarse voice.

"I'm all right, Dad. Really."

Dad nods slowly. "Lemme make a call."

* * *

"So lemme get this straight. No name, no location, just a physical description. And you want to find this guy."

Bob Fletcher is about five years older than Dad, give or take, and he'd been gruffly friendly when they arrived at the station house, shaking Dad's hand hard and extending Sam the same iron grip. But the friendliness had been quickly supplanted by a professional kind of detachment, and after they finish their halting story of Dean's disappearance and the subsequent clues about his possible origins, Fletcher's look is already regretful.

"I don't gotta tell you," he continues evenly, "that isn't a lot to go on."

"But you'll help us," Dad says. His smile doesn't falter while he gives a little nod. "Right?"

Fletcher exchanges a long look with him, and Sam frowns. A lot of things passing between them unsaid, maybe the debt Dad had mentioned earlier, and not for the first time he wishes his damned unstable psychic talent would allow him to peer inside Dad's head, or Fletcher's. Enough to give him a clue what the hell they aren't saying.

"There's more," Sam says.

Fletcher's cool assessing look focuses on him instead. "I'm listening."

"He died in 1979."

Fletcher goes very still, then leans back, placing his hands flat on his desk blotter. "Oh, so he's dead, too? This is getting better all the time, guys."

"No, listen." Sam hunches forward, elbows on his knees. "He died violently. I'm not sure – how, exactly, but I know it was a violent death. It would have looked like an accident."

"Looked like?" Fletcher quirks an eyebrow. "But it wasn't?"

Sam shakes his head slowly. "Not even close."

Silent for a moment, Fletcher glances between them, then gives a tiny sigh. "Considering the source," he says finally, "I'm not even gonna ask how you know that, when you don't even know who this guy is. All right, then. Age?"

"Somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five."

"Anything else?"

"He -- There were two children. Dean, and an older boy. Early teens."

"You realize in New York City alone there were probably dozens of middle-aged men who died violently that year? You guys make needles in haystacks look damned easy."

"Bear with us," comes Dad's even voice. "It's important, Bob."

"No, I get that. Hell, I remember Dean."

"Then help us."

"Not New York," Sam says thinly. "Not a big city."

"Oh?"

"I saw –" Sam licks his dry lips. "I think it was maybe the suburbs. Or in the country."

Fletcher gives him a doubtful look but jots it down. "Anything else in your magic 8-Ball there?"

Sam forces a smile. "Wealthy. Very much so."

"Now that does narrow it down." Fletcher nods. "All right, then. Gonna take me a while. I know you guys are in a hurry, I see that much, but this isn't gonna be like searching the phone book."

"We appreciate it." Dad stands and holds out his hand, and Fletcher shakes it. "You got my number."

"Think of anything else, you give me a call. I'll see what I can do." Fletcher swallows, glances around, and says in a lower voice, "Brenda sends her regards. She – hasn't forgotten what you did for us, John. We owe you – a lot."

Dad nods curtly. "Don't mention it. Sam?"

"Yeah."

* * *

Finding the caseworker isn't as hard as Sam has feared.

"She'd be – up there in years now." Dad handles the Impala with the same easy grace Sam remembers from his childhood, elbow on the door, long fingers loose on the wheel. "In her seventies, probably."

"Think she's still alive?"

"Phone book says she is. We'll see."

Hugh and Marcia Tate's address is listed, and it doesn't take long to find it. The Impala ticks in the silence while they stare at the house.

"No points for waiting," Dad says, but he isn't moving any too quickly either. His face is pale beneath the tan, a muscle ticcing in his jaw.

"Dad? You okay?"

A thin, humorless smile appears and disappears on Dad's lips. His eyes are focused on the house. "Been a while," he says after a long moment. "Don't know if she can help. Hell, if she even remembers him."

Sam laughs, and sees the surprise on Dad's face. "I can think of a lot of ways to describe Dean," Sam says, shaking his head. "Believe me, 'forgettable' isn't one of them."

Dad nods, smiles again. "Got that right. Come on."

The woman answering the door – fast, no waiting – is reassuringly spry, bright blue eyes gazing at them inquisitively. "Yes?"

"Marcia Tate?" Dad asks. He sounds uncertain, younger.

"Yes, I'm Mrs. Tate. Can I help you?"

"I'm sure you don't remember me. My wife and I – Mary – you helped us adopt a boy years ago. I'm John Winchester."

She gazes at him, and Sam sees a flicker of recognition in her eyes. "The -- The little boy from the bus station," she breathes. "Mr. Winchester!"

Dad nods awkwardly. "This is my son Sam."

She gives him a fast glance, but her focus is on Dad. "I remember," she says breathily. "Oh, lordy. That poor baby boy. You -- How is he? Dean, wasn't it? You named him Dean?"

"That's right. I, ah." Dad swallows and clears his throat. "I wondered if we could ask you a few questions, Mrs. Tate. About that time."

"Marcia, please." Her smile is fading; she looks between them, a line appearing between her eyebrows. "Come inside."

The house is cool and immaculate, and she leads them into a well-appointed living room, gesturing at the sofa. "Have a seat. Would you like some coffee?"

"No, thanks." Dad sits awkwardly on the sofa, and Sam hesitates a moment before sitting beside him. "I -- Some things have come up, and I -- We were wondering what you remembered about the time when Dean was found. The girl who found him."

"Oh, that was such a tragedy." Marcia Tate sits in a spindly chair, smoothing her slacks with bony hands. "Sometimes good deeds aren't very well rewarded, I suppose."

"I know she was killed – hit by a car?"

Marcia nods. "Hit and run. They never found who did it. Her poor family."

Dad takes a deep breath. "She told you she found him. Did you believe her?"

"If you want the truth," Marcia says slowly, "I didn't, entirely. Oh, she might have been telling the truth." She shrugs, but the sharpness is back in her eyes. "I worked a long time in Children's Services, Mr. Winchester. I saw a whole lot, I'm sure you can imagine."

"John, please."

"All right, John." A quick searching look at Sam. "We suspected she was the mother, but she denied it. And she died so soon after, it wasn't -- Well, her family was already suffering."

"She wasn't Dean's mother," Sam whispers. "And she didn't find him at a bus station."

"How do you know that?"

"Mrs -- Marcia." Dad waits until she looks back at him. "Dean – my son – disappeared about a week ago. Sam and me, we -- We think it might have something to do with Dean's birth parents. His birth family."

Marcia goes very still, staring at him in shock. "You don't think –"

"We -- We need to find out who his birth parents were. And I think Beth knew."

Watching his father, Sam has trouble reconciling this polite man with the blustering bull in a china shop he remembers. This John Winchester is almost agonizingly careful, and it occurs to Sam that this is the John Marcia remembers. The pre-demon John, the John who saw a blond-haired baby and loved him.

"I'm sorry," Marcia says slowly. "If she did, she took that knowledge to the grave."

Dad shifts a little, nodding. "Maybe so. Did -- Was there anything else? Did Dean -- Did he have anything with him? Do you remember?"

Marcia cocks her head a little to the side. "His clothes, a little blanket. But John, we didn't keep those. If there had been anything like identification, we would have found it. Do you think something bad has happened to him? He'd be – what, twenty-five now?"

"Twenty-seven," Dad says hoarsely.

"I'm terribly sorry. The baby – Dean – was a complete mystery. We tried everything – well, I'm sure you remember – but we never had anything to go on but the girl's story, and when she was killed, well." Marcia gives a delicate shrug. "No one stepped up to claim him. We tried publicity – ran stories in the paper, that sort of thing. Not even a nibble." She frowned. "Even the silence seemed a bit odd to me."

Sam leaned forward. "Why?"

"Well, a baby like that – and no one knowing a thing? If he'd been a newborn, I might have assumed some poor woman abandoned him, but he was older than that, three months, I think. Approximately. Long enough to have been somewhere before here, right?"

Sam nodded.

"So where was he?" she asks.

"That's…what we're trying to find out, ma'am."

"I could make a few calls. Today – I haven't worked for the department since 1992, you understand, but even then we were starting to look into DNA as a possible method of determining a child's paternity, that sort of thing. I suppose -- But to do a DNA test we would need a judge to order the girl's body dug up, and that –"

"No," Sam said firmly. "She wasn't his mother."

Marcia peered at him. "But how do you know that? We never –"

"Did anyone else – seem interested in him?" Dad asked, with a lightning-quick warning look in Sam's direction. "Any other potential families looking to adopt, maybe?"

"He -- No, no, you and your wife were the only ones with serious interest. How is your wife, John? Mary, right?"

"She passed," Dad said woodenly. "Not long after Sam here was born."

"Oh, lordy. I'm so sorry to hear that."

Dad cleared his throat. "Anything," he said with such naked need Sam felt like recoiling. "Anything you can think of. Dean -- He's my boy, Marcia. I need to find him."

Her look softens, tinged with real regret. "I'm sorry, John," she says softly. "Your son, Dean -- He was as big a mystery to us as he was to you. I wish I could tell you otherwise. But he was just – the baby at the bus station. And we found him a wonderful family, and -- Is he in trouble now, John?"

"I don't know," Dad whispers.

"But you think he is."

"Yes."

"I -- I don't quite know what to say. I'm so very sorry."

Dad gives a stiff nod. "I – appreciate it. Listen, if –" He digs in his shirt pocket, brings out a card. "If you think of anything, call this man? Bob Fletcher, he's a detective –"

"I know Bob," Marcia says with a brief smile. "He grew up just down the street. Turned into a fine police officer."

"Yeah. He's, ah. Giving us a hand. He knows how to get in touch with me, if."

"Yes, all right. If I can think of anything, I'll certainly let you know. John, again, I'm very sorry I couldn't do more." Her smile fades, leaving her looking worried and older. "That baby was very special. To all of us."

Dad gives another shaky nod. "Special," he whispers. "Yes. He is."

Outside the house, Sam takes a deep breath of sun-warmed air and glances at his father. "Think she was telling the truth?"

"Yeah." Dad walks like he's just been kneed in the groin, stiff and hurting. It makes Sam's chest ache. "I told you, that girl, she –"

Dad's cell phone rings, and he stops by the Impala, digging it out. "Winchester." Listens, then gives a curt "come here" gesture with his chin.

It's hard to get close enough to hear what's being said, and Dad thumbs up the volume. "Say that again, Bob?"

"Looks like we mighta gotten lucky, John," comes Fletcher's tinny voice. "I found something that matches your description. Long shot, but –"

"That's okay," Dad says evenly. "Who?"

"Name was Michael Fleming. If that's your guy, you weren't kidding about the wealthy part. Killed in an MVA in March 1979."

"Car crash?"

"Here's the weird part. Had two kids, both boys. But the younger one was with him in the car. Died on the scene. A baby."

Dad takes a sharp breath. "Wha -- Sammy?"

But Sam isn't listening any longer. The sunlight is too bright, and he hears a rushing sound and his father's anxious voice, and then nothing at all.

* * *

TBC. EB 


	18. Chapter 18

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2007**

**18.**

"Do you see?" the man asks. His face is no longer handsome: drawn with fear, exhaustion, tight with knowledge. His hair is mussed, and his hand shakes when he reaches for Sam.

"Michael Fleming," Sam whispers, and the man's smile is brief and terrible.

"My wife is dead," Fleming says in a voice thick with tired grief. "And I will be soon. Tell me I did the right thing. Tell me!"

The room is cold, so cold, and outside the window the snow swirls, brushes icy fingertips against the glass. "I don't know," Sam manages. "He – He came to us. We love him. Is that what you wanted?"

Fleming's eyes close, inaudible words on his lips.

"It wasn't a car accident," Sam says. "Was it? Who killed you? Was it the boy?"

When Fleming opens his eyes again they stare over Sam's shoulder, wide with horror.

Sam turns and sees a blur of motion, feels the brush of cool hard scales against his skin, and he flings himself back but it isn't for him, isn't real for him, and he staggers through a table as if it isn't even there, reels and yanks himself upright. The boy isn't here, the blue-eyed boy is gone, but there is someone else, something else.

Fleming thuds to his knees, arms limp at his sides. "Then do it," he says quietly. "I beat you. I beat you, you miserable cocksucking –"

The whirl of darkness descends, thick and choking, and for a moment Sam can't see Fleming at all. Hears a crunch like a dog biting into a bone, and Fleming slides to the floor, the shadows gone as if they had never been. His blue eyes stare at nothing at all. There is a faint smile on his full lips.

Then a scream like a host of banshees, coming from everywhere and nowhere, like knives driven into his eardrums. Sam claps his hands over his ears, feels slippery hot blood between his fingers. The room wavers, bows outward and sucks back like infernal lungs drawing a titanic breath, and snow scrapes his face, wind like sharp fingernails clawing at his cheeks.

The car isn't made for this weather, isn't meant for anything but maybe Le Mans, and he watches it slide, slamming into a massive oak, the hood crumpling like aluminum foil. The explosion knocks him on his ass, slipping and sliding on the treacherous highway.

He sees the ice melting next to the burning hulk of the little car, and through the broken window, Michael Fleming's open, dead eyes. Sam swallows blood, draws breath to scream, and hands grip his shoulders, a voice snaps, "Breathe, Sammy, god DAMN it, fucking BREATHE."

He stares up into his father's flushed, frightened face and nods. "I'm here," he wheezes. "I'm here."

Dad's hands don't ease their tight grip, his fingers digging in hard. "Christ," he gasps. "You scared the shit out of me."

It's such an odd thing for his father to say, Sam just gapes at him, and Dad gives him a little shake and lets go, sitting down hard on Marcia Tate's neat lawn.

His ears are still ringing with that terrible many-throated scream. The sun is too bright, the heat shocking after the snow. He sits up slowly, coughs once. "Dad, I saw –"

"Get in the car," Dad says.

"I –"

"Jesus, your EARS."

Sam frowns, and touches his right ear. It's tacky with the familiar stickiness of blood. His stomach turns over once, queasily.

His father's shaking while he tugs Sam to his feet, herds him to the car. Sam looks to the right after the door closes, sees Marcia Tate standing on the porch watching, her face twisted with fright. The house's broad living-room window is broken.

"Did I do that?" Sam asks hoarsely when his father slings himself into the driver's seat.

"Shut up. Lemme drive."

But Dad drops the keys twice before he can jam them into the ignition, and his knuckles are white, gripping the wheel.

Somewhere near the highway, Dad pulls the Impala to the curb, puts it in neutral. The engine rumbles, low and fierce and ready.

"Whatever killed Michael Fleming, it wasn't human," Sam says.

"No shit," his father says after a moment. "Thought you were gonna bring it back with you."

Sam sits up a little, turns to gaze at him. "You saw it?"

Dad drags a hand across his mouth. His fingers are still trembling when he hands Sam a tissue. "Not exactly. Heard it. Me and the rest of the neighborhood."

Sam nods unsteadily and wipes at the blood in his ears. It doesn't hurt. "It killed him, and then faked the car accident."

"It." Dad glances at him, and then yanks the wheel when the Impala veers left. His jaw is twitching when he adds, "That the kind of 'it' I think it is?"

"You mean as in supernatural? Yes."

"The same –"

"No." Sam shakes his head, and the interior of the car swims for a moment, briefly turning gray and colorless before brightening back to normal. "Whatever it was," he says after swallowing nausea, "it wasn't the demon that killed Mom and Jess."

"But it was demonic?"

"I think so. Dad, I don't KNOW, all I can say is what I saw. The man – Fleming – he talked to me. He asked me –" He breaks off, tasting blood.

Dad's expression is fierce. "What? What did he ask you?"

"If -- If he did the right thing." He pinches the bridge of his nose, willing the tendrils of rising pain to recede. "People don't -- This is different, okay? I don't usually – interact with the people in my visions. He's reaching out, something, I can't tell."

"Reaching out from where?"

His head is already starting to throb, and it's hard to think. He sees fire and terror, and when he whispers, "Maybe Hell," it feels absolutely right.

His dad's face is pale, dark beard stark over his cheeks. "I'm gonna guess you don't mean figuratively."

Sam shakes his head, and Dad looks away. "You gotta control it, that's all," he says after a long pause. It's hard to hear him over the engine. "If you're getting messages from HELL –"

"I think," Sam says slowly, "it's because of Dean. Because of our connection. Dean's father – Michael Fleming – died for Dean, died to save Dean. From something. And now –"

He breaks off, and his father glances at him. "Now, what?"

"Now Dean's in danger again. Maybe the same danger."

If anything Dad goes paler, but he's nodding curtly. "This Fleming guy ever say what kind of danger while he was at it?"

"No. But I think I can put two and two together. Can't you?"

"If I could, you think I'd be asking?"

Sam meets his unreadable eyes and shrugs. "I don't know if it's irony or just maybe kismet, but it's the same kind of danger that killed Mom. Demonic." Dad draws a breath and Sam lifts his hand. "Not the same demon. At least I don't think. But whatever killed Fleming is after Dean now."

Dad nods slowly. "But why now? Dean's 27 years old; it could have done this at any time. Why now?"

Staring out the window, Sam says, "I think you're wrong. I don't think it could, before. I think –" His throat tightens, and he swallows with difficulty. "Maybe being with us protected Dean, somehow," he says thickly.

"You're saying when we adopted Dean, we what? Shielded him?" He hears his father snort, but can't look at him. "Sammy, you may be on some kinda psychic hotline here, but your mom and me, we -- Before that night, there was never anything supernatural about us. We were just people."

Sam isn't sure he believes that, but there's a time and a place, and this is not it. "It's not about power," he says distantly. His head is pounding now; his stomach clenches into a familiar knot. "It's about faith, Dad."

His father doesn't say anything. Sam turns his aching head, sees Dad's tight expression. "We loved him, and he loved us," he continues. "And as long as that was true, it kept him safe."

"That hasn't changed," his father snaps.

"Yes. It has."

Misery twists his father's features, so quickly and terribly Sam forgets his burgeoning headache for a moment. "No," Dad whispers. "You're wrong."

"Maybe when Dean stopped believing we were his family," Sam goes on inexorably, hating himself more than a little, "that protection failed. Dean popped up on the radar again. Don't you get it? He lost faith. He stopped believing. And maybe that was all it took. It's why Missouri can't see him, can't feel him anymore. It's why Dean's father is reaching out like –"

"I'm his father," Dad says. There's no anger in the words. It's raw and desperate, and Sam feels it like a knife between his ribs.

"I know," he whispers. "But it makes sense. What I've seen -- There's nothing ordinary about it. Dean's biological father died because of a demon, and we can't sit around much longer. We can't. If we don't find him soon, it's –"

He can't go on, and when he meets his father's terrible gaze he sees he doesn't have to.

Dad puts the Impala back in gear with a tight nod. "So where to?" he asks gruffly. "This Fleming guy tell you that?"

"No. But your friend Bob can."

Dad sits very still, then nods again.

* * *

According to Bob Fletcher, at the time of his death Michael Fleming was pretty much made of money.

"Got it the old-fashioned way," Fletcher says, glancing around the park where he'd agreed to meet Sam and his father.

"Inherited it?" Sam watches narrow-eyed while Fletcher nods. "Industry? Banking, what?"

"Well, pinning down what exactly he owned is kinda the trouble." Fletcher shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. "He was in business, no doubt about it, but nothing to suggest he'd give a Rockefeller a bad night. But at the time of his death his estate was valued at several billion, and that's not adjusted for inflation. In today's dollars? I'm not an accountant, but that's a serious pile of cash."

It tracks with the glimpses Sam's seen, the enormous (not-there) house, the servants, the air of comfort that seems to permeate his visions of Fleming. Dean, he thinks with a little shock, is probably loaded now. So much for fleapit motels.

"What happened after he died?" Dad asks. There is no humor or wonder in his lined face; he looks grim, focused, no trace of the gentleness Sam saw only an hour or so ago.

"Estate went to the surviving son. Gabriel."

Gabriel Fleming. Gabriel, the boy with the icy blue eyes. No longer a boy – fourteen years older than Dean. Forty-one now, give or take.

Sam fights down a renewed sense of unease. "Anything else?"

Fletcher watches him, and then slowly shakes his head. "Nothing you can't get from Forbes. So you gonna tell me what this is all about?" He glances at Dad, who's shaking his head.

"The less you know, the better," Dad says grimly. "I appreciate your help, Bob."

"You're…not going to tell me what this is all about, I take it."

Dad shrugs. "Maybe someday."

Sam doesn't think Bob Fletcher looks all that disappointed.

"Where?" Sam asks.

"The family?" Fletcher's eyes are careful, scrutinizing him until Sam feels like he's in some kind of mutant line-up. "Connecticut," Fletcher finally says. "Got an estate up there. Although hell, they could probably own places all over the damn country. World, for all I know."

Sam nods. "We'll find out. Thank you. This is -- You've been a great deal of help."

Fletcher looks between them, and finally shrugs. "Like I said, I owe you fellas."

"Not any more," says Dad. He swallows. "Debt's paid, Bob. I'm not gonna ask for more."

"You guys be careful." Fletcher makes a face, gives Sam's father a beseeching look. "This shit you mess with -- It's real, and it's dangerous."

A faint smile plays around Dad's mouth. "Yeah. It is."

* * *

"Leaving soon."

Sam glances over at Missouri, then back at the mess he's making in the sink. He nods and rinses the washcloth, turning his head to see if he's gotten all the blood out of his ears. "Soon as we can," he agrees quietly.

"Come talk to me when you get done."

He takes his time, listening to the faint sounds of Dad moving around in the other of Missouri's extra bedrooms, thumps like things hitting the floor: Dad, packing.

The laptop is still powered up. Struck, he slides into the chair and goes to Google, types in Michael Fleming's name and keeps his hand poised over the first link for a long time before clicking it.

It's a short obituary, linked from the New Yorker, dated April 8th, 1979. Michael Edward Fleming, 1925-1979. Preceded in death by wife Evelyn Eames Fleming. Survived by son Gabriel and daughter Auriel; newborn son Raphael also perished in the accident.

"Raphael," Sam says aloud. "His name is Raphael."

"Sam."

He turns slowly, blinking up at his father's face. "Dean's name," Sam says jerkily. "I found his name."

Dad's watching him, mouth pressed tight. He says nothing.

"Raphael. Raphael Fleming."

"That's not his name."

"It was. His birth name. The boy I saw, his name is Gabriel. And there's a sister, Auriel."

Dad frowns. "Gave them all angelic names, huh?"

"And Michael." Sam nods. "Think it means anything?"

"Not ruling anything out." Dad's mouth goes tight, eyes dark. "Pack your gear. Leaving at first light."

Sam meets his steady gaze, and something crystallizes in his belly, something eager and angry. "Yeah," he agrees. "We are."

There's a quirk of a smile at the corner of his father's mouth, there and gone again, and then he ducks away.

* * *


	19. Chapter 19

_Author's note: With my apologies for such a long wait between chapters. Always planned to return to this, and plan to keep on going, as well. My thanks to y'all for your patience and your kind reviews, and I hope you enjoy the update! EB_

* * *

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**(c)2007**

**Chapter 19**

Being on the road again with his dad is possibly the trippiest thing he's done since he first made out Dean's face in the shadows of his own Palo Alto living room. It's the weirdest mix of familiar and brand-spanking new: the car, the music (Dad's mellowing in his old age; it's all Fleetwood Mac and Jefferson Airplane, and Sam's pretty sure Dean would be having some kind of aneurysm right now if he could hear "The Chain" crooning out of the speakers), even the way his father grips the steering wheel.

"Missed this girl," Dad says, and Sam nods and feels his throat tightening down, inexorable as breathing. Dean's car. The Impala hasn't been Dad's since Dean's nineteenth birthday. She's Dean's car, and that's what jars him the most: It's all familiar, a mindfuck fast lane back to being a teenager stuck with too-long legs and too-big dreams in a car that wasn't built to house a family, and the beating heart of that family gone, not dead but worse, maybe, altered, a change so fundamental it wasn't until now that Sam felt just how deep those connections went.

He stares out the window, wonders if the ache in his throat will ever clear up enough to let him eat again, and finally says, "She misses Dean."

Dad doesn't answer.

It's a hell of a long drive to Connecticut, 1500 miles give or take a few hundred, and Sam can't imagine surviving it. His hip hurts, but it's nothing next to this deeper agony.

Outside St. Louis – switched to local radio, some oldies station, Buddy Holly and "Not Fade Away" – Dad clears his throat and says, "Remember when we came here that time in '96?"

Sam looks at him, sees the faint smile on Dad's lips. "The thing with the poltergeist? The school?"

"That, yeah, but the house. Remember that house?"

Some part of him would like to deny it. Say, No, Dad, they all looked the same to me. Old, cheap, cold in winter and hotter than the hinges of hell in summer. Always smelled like rancid bacon fat and cabbage and dead cigarette smoke, and the landlord was always a guy with a bad haircut and a leisure suit, who never would call a plumber when the tub backed up and yet was always there every month on the first, wanting his rent check. And the neighbors were always the same ones: college kids living in slums because it was all they could afford on the money Mom and Dad sent them, single-parent families with too many kids who lived in slums because it was all they could afford, period, drug dealers and drugstore clerks and unemployed moms by the score, they were all the fucking same place, when you got right down to it. How would one stick out more than the rest?

But he can't say that, because he does remember. So he nods and says, "Yeah, Dad. The house on Eubanks Street."

"You were in eighth grade. And Dean was a senior. Jesus. Never thought he'd graduate."

"Neither did he."

Dad glances at him, then back at the road, squinting a little at the interchange signs. "I wanted to stay there," he says after a long pause. "Thought real hard about it."

"We could have." Sam swallows over the lump in his throat – still there and showing no signs of fading – and shrugs. "It was a decent place. Better than most."

"Yeah. That it was."

"So? Why didn't we?"

Dad's not smiling anymore. His face is tight and expressionless, eyes dark unreadable holes staring straight ahead. Sam draws a breath to say something, jab, maybe, it's instinct, this car, this solitude, this weird aching I-got-nothing-to-fucking-lose feeling, and Dad says, "Dean."

"What?"

"Dean didn't want to."

"That's –"

"Just after he graduated. You were, I dunno, off someplace. Doing your thing. I never knew. I was working in that shop, that guy, Troy Ellison, the one that did all the imports. Hated working on imports, fucking plastic Jap shit. Dean comes to the shop one afternoon, couple days after graduation. The guys knew him. Dean says, Can I talk to you, Dad, and hell, I'm bored and the computers did most of the work anyway, so I told Troy I was taking off early."

Sam's staring at him, squinting like Dad's out of focus, because yeah, maybe it was Dean's idea but he'd never told him, never said, This place you kinda liked, the one we all kinda liked, it was my idea to leave it, okay? Not Dad's.

"So we get some coffee, and Dean goes, Dad, you like it here? And you know Dean, I mean, heart-to-heart doesn't come easy. But he's watching me like it matters, so I kinda start to say something, and he goes, Because this isn't us.

"What? I'm asking him, and he's telling me we're sitting on our asses in apple pie central while bad things are going on that we could stop. I'm sitting there thinking, Those are my lines, but he's dead serious, saying maybe Sammy's okay but he ain't all that happy, I know I'm not, and dude, I know you're not, either."

He goes quiet, and Sam unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth and says, "So? That's it? That's why we left?"

"Yeah," Dad says softly. The smile is back. "That's it."

"You were still hunting. I mean, we all were, it's not like –"

"Dean called it for what it was. Playing pretend. Saw through the heart of it, knew none of us was happy. Had what you always said we should want, right? Decent place, schools, jobs." Now Dad's looking at him, and it makes him feel like he can't breathe. A heavy look, memories like lead weights bearing him down. "I was tired of fighting you," he says starkly. "Tired of doing it all. And Dean called my bullshit. And then he did the same with you, remember?"

He does remember. He remembers that bedroom with the faded blue curtains, relic of a long-ago tenant with nesting urges, and yellow late-afternoon sunlight on painted walls, brightening Dean's hair to old glossy gold. Remembers Dean's low, even voice, and his own anger, words like blades that skidded over Dean's certainty, bent like aluminum, useless.

"It was your quest," Sam murmurs. "Never mine."

"Maybe not, back then." Still no anger. His father sounds tired, hoarse, like his throat is as sore as Sam's. "But he kept us true. Reminded us what was important."

Family was important, Sam thinks. The most important thing to Dean. Not even the hunt was more important. Did he tell you that? That's what he told me that afternoon. He said, Sammy, we stay together. What we do, it's important. And it's important that we do it together. We're strongest when we're together, all right? You know it. I'm right.

It's evening, and the light is going, and he can't blame the stinging in his eyes on anything. Divided we fall, Sam thinks, and bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to explain the tears he can't show his father.

* * *

Around midnight they get a motel room in Marshall, Illinois. Sam's tired, a funky restless kind of exhaustion that makes it impossible to sleep. His bones ache, his head aches, and he can't stop wondering if Dean's okay, if he's sleeping now, if he's safe and fuck, if he's still alive. 

Can't see him, Missouri had said. Cold grips Sam's bones, and he pulls restlessly at the stiff covers, blinks up at the dark ceiling.

"When we saw him," Dad says from the other bed, "he looked at Mary like he already knew her. Like he recognized her."

Sam swallows, and says nothing. Dad sounds different, not tired, just reflective. It isn't pain in his voice. It's wonder, maybe.

"Reached up to her, these little fingers grabbing, like, 'Mom, pick me up already.'" Dad gives a soft laugh, and the bed creaks gently beneath him. "I remember, I looked at her and she was just staring at him, and she'd never been so beautiful. Reaches down and picks him up, and they look each other, right in the eye. Mary, she doesn't say a word. Just smiles, and he smiles, big old gummy grin."

Sam stares upward, but he's seeing that baby in the photo, that spun white-gold tuft of hair. Dean was a beautiful baby. He's a beautiful adult. Makes sense.

"Didn't much take to me at first," Dad says after a little silence. "Mary he latched onto right away; me, well, I was kinda on probation for a while. I would do in a pinch, but it was Mary he wanted all the time, never did settle right with me, not at first. He was Mama's boy. Through and through.

"I came home from work one day, long-ass day, I remember that, I was tired as hell and just wanted to put my feet up, you know. Mary and Dean were right there, standing on the porch, and Mary, she's just glowing. And she says, He said his first word. I'm thinking, And I missed it, and Dean reaches out for me and he says, Da.

"Mary, she goes, See?" Dad's voice is suddenly hoarse, thick and muffled. "That was his first real word. Me. It was me he wanted right then."

It's that curious sensation of hunger on top of sickness. He wants to hear it, craves it like water, and some part of him is drawing away, covering its ears, no, no, none of this is REAL. He has nothing to say. Nothing that can touch his father's grief.

"See, Sammy?" Dad asks, belligerent tone so raw Sam wants to cover his ears for real. "He's my boy. You and Dean, you're my boys. I won't give that up. Won't give HIM up. You got that?"

Sam nods slowly, even if Dad can't see it in the dark. Me, either, he thinks, and the ceiling blurs into prisms, because what if it's Dean who's given them up? What about that?

He sleeps a little, finally, and wakes to his father's snores. Old comfort sound, all is right, but nothing is, not really. Sam presses his face into the bleach-smelling pillow and closes his eyes.

* * *

A hundred or so miles past Dayton, they pull over to help with a four-car pileup. No medics on the scene yet, and people are milling around like zombies, shell-shocked and stupid. People don't keep their heads in emergencies; they get confused, lose perspective. 

Sam comforts a pretty woman stuck in her beetle-shaped economy car, assures her that yes, her child is okay, he's fine, everything's gonna be okay, even though the amount of blood streaming from her head wound is a little daunting.

Dean is good with emergencies. God knows he's got the experience, they all do, but it's Dean who's really in his element, got that tone of voice that says people are in good hands. Sam's holding the kid, maybe two years old, and the boy is crying, wailing really. Sam pats him awkwardly, croons to him and promises his mommy's fine, everything's fine, holds the struggling body and watches while Dad presses thick gauze to the woman's temple, efficient and gruff.

Ambulances show up, tv crews, and Sam gives up the still-crying kid to a paramedic, watches until he sees the little plastic car peeled open, the woman extricated and safe, and then he nods at Dad and climbs into the Impala. Hits him all over again, the absence, the wrong person behind the wheel, and anger makes his throat tight, his heart speeding up.

The little boy's screams echo in his ears until it's all he can hear. Not even the Impala's rumble penetrates. Dean would have had that kid calm in no time. Dean is good at that, good with kids, and Sam's always been a little uneasy. Dean could do it standing on his head.

"Maybe time for some chow," Dad says fifty miles later. There's a smear of the woman's blood on his cheek. He hasn't noticed.

Sam stares out the window, at a little girl waving from the Prius they're passing. He doesn't wave back. "Not hungry."

"Need the fuel."

"Whatever," Sam whispers.

* * *

Connecticut is pretty, tame, genteel. Dean, Sam thinks, has never been suited to the upper east coast. He fits in the west, open spaces and larger skies. The east, he said once, cramped him, and now Sam surveys the landscape and feels it pressing against him, too. 

The Impala sits by the side of the road, ticking gently in the heat. Dad's fingers tap on the steering wheel, an old familiar pattern. "Now where?" he asks, his eyes distant.

Sam climbs out, and hears his knees pop when his legs straighten, his hip snarling stiffly. The pain is infrequent but real, and he favors the leg while he unfolds the map, lays it flat on the hood of the car.

His father's face is heavily bearded; neither of them has bothered with niceties like shaving lately, and Dad smells pretty rough, too. "Got something?"

Sam glares down at the map, stabs it with a finger. "Here. Fleming, Connecticut."

"Got a town named after 'em, huh."

"Might not be the same Flemings, but I'll take that chance. New London County. South of here."

Dad watches him, gives a tight nod. "It's a start. Let's roll."

A part of him agrees, but it isn't the part that stands firm, shaking his head. "Wait a second."

"What?"

"Wait. I mean, he's close. I can feel he's close. But Dad, I mean, what are we gonna do when he find him?"

A semi roars past, whipping his father's shirt, his own, sending gravel rattling over the blacktop. "What are we gonna do? We're gonna get him back where he belongs, that's what we're gonna do." Dad stares at him, eyes thunderous. "What did you think? Give him a bon-voyage party?"

Sam breathes deep through his nose, smelling exhaust and sweet green grass. "I mean," he says evenly, "what if what we want isn't what he wants?"

"It will be. Trust me."

"Dad, Dean's --- He's got the truth now. He ran from us. From me. Now you think because we've found him, all is forgiven? How do you know that?"

Dad says nothing, turns on his heel and reaches for the Impala's door handle.

"Answer me!" Sam says sharply. "You wanna just waltz right in and grab him? It won't work that way, Dad! Don't you get it? He doesn't want to be found."

"Tough," Dad says. A muscle in his jaw twitches, making his beard jump. "He's acting like a spoiled child. Running off when he heard something he didn't like. Just needs to see sense, that's all. He'll come around."

Sam gapes at him, and swallows with difficulty. "Is -- Is that what you really think? That this -- All of this is just Dean…acting out?"

Dad leans an elbow on the car roof. "He's pissed. I know that. But Dean's my son, Sammy, he knows that. Deep down. He's mad at me, maybe mad at you. He'll get through this. We all will."

Sam's shaking his head, ignoring the twinge in his hip while he circles the car. "Dad -- It's more than that. Family is everything to Dean. This -- It's the worst kind of betrayal, to him. You think he's mad? It's worse than that. He's hurt, Dad. You hurt him. You didn't tell him the truth when you could, and now –"

"You think I don't know that? Christ, I know that. I know." Dad nods rapidly, lips tight. "I get that. But it's a fucking piece of paper! Who gives a damn what that paper says? Huh? What does that mean? Nothing! It's crap!"

"It's not crap to Dean," Sam says. "It's not. Whether or not you believe that."

"So we find him, and we tell him that. He's my son, and he's your brother. That's never gonna change."

"Are you sure? Dean's gone, Dad. Dean doesn't want to see us, he's made that crystal clear. You think this is something he should just…shake off? That it?"

Dad watches him, mouth working, saying nothing.

"It is. You think he should just shrug it off."

"I would."

"Yeah, like you shrugged off Mom?"

Dad's in his face, just like that, and it's familiar and tired and invigorating all at the same time. "You leave your mother out of this," Dad snarls. His breath smells like coffee and smoke and terror. "She loved Dean as her own boy! This is not the same."

"And none of it was real," Sam says. "Not from where he's sitting. Don't you get it? That's my point! Jesus, are you just trying not to see what I'm saying? It's worse than Mom. It's everything Dean believed in, everything he cared about. His whole life was a lie!"

"No." Dad grips the front of Sam's shirt, face kissing-close, rage baking off him like radioactive waves. Rage, and a sweet-sick fear that curdles Sam's stomach. "Never. Never that. I never, ever lied to him. Not about anything that mattered."

"Nothing but this one thing," Sam whispers. "And it's the biggest lie of all, Dad."

His father lets go, stumbles back as if Sam's kneed him in the nuts. If this were the old days – the good old days, when Dean was here and everything made sense – they'd just be warming up. First bell wouldn't even have rung yet.

But Dad looks beaten already. Lost, confused, and anxiety arrows into Sam's chest, strangles the air in his lungs.

"We have to do this his way," he manages, watching his father grab the Impala, hold onto the car like she is the only thing supporting him. Maybe she is. "Dean's way. Not your way, not my way. His way. Or all this –" Sam gestures limply, lets his hand drop again. "None of this matters. No orders, no – family business crap. If we want him back, Dad, it has to be on his terms."

"Or what?" Dad says woodenly.

"I think you know."

When they get back in the vehicle it's his father moving like a man with a recent hip replacement, and Sam forgets his own discomfort, sitting very still while Dad mechanically puts the car in gear, eases them out into traffic. He wants to apologize, feels it on the tip of his tongue. But for what? Dean is gone, and they haven't gotten him back yet.

Turning his eyes to face forward, Sam wonders if they ever will.

* * *

_ TBC. EB_

* * *


	20. Chapter 20

_Author's note: This concludes part two of the story. I'll be continuing it in part three, chs. 21-30. My thanks to Kunju for her beta fu, and to you folks for your kind feedback and your patience while this story was stalled the past few months. I hope to keep it flowing now. And I hope you enjoy! EB_

* * *

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**?007**

**Chapter 20**

"Figure we'll bunk here tonight. Head to Fleming first thing in the a.m." Dad glances without interest around the motel room, and then gives Sam a brisk nod. "Beer run. Be back in a few."

Sam nods, and sighs once the door shuts behind his father. His hip aches, too much sitting still in a car that never has had quite enough space for his legs.

For some unspoken reason they've stopped just short of their destination for the night, a bare twenty miles or so from Fleming. Now that they're close, Sam doesn't sense Dean at all. Maybe all of it's just been an illusion. He's felt Dean near because he needed to feel him, because he wanted to so desperately. Nothing psychic about it, just old-fashioned loneliness. Except for his time at Stanford, he and Dean have never been separated for long. Plenty of times since then he's wished for it, felt like he was going to strangle Dean in his sleep for being so fucking annoying, cringing at the stale pickup lines he used on girls who deserved way better, his tics and ingrained habits.

He doesn't sense anything now. This is just some burb outside a burb -- Wherever, Connecticut, a tiny town near another even smaller town in a flyspeck of a state, and Dean is – somewhere, not here. And tomorrow, come whatever else, Sam and his father are going to find him.

He sighs again and levers himself off the bed, fills a plastic glass with ice and pours some water from the bathroom tap. It tastes strongly of minerals, salty, and he grimaces and looks at his unshaven face, the bags under his eyes –

And sees another face, a silent explosion of light and no heat, teeth bared in a radiant grin.

"There you are," the man croons, singsong, gazing at him with clear blue eyes. "Sammy. Dean's little Sammy. Only he's not Dean anymore. Did you miss the memo, Sammy? Big brother's a little brother now."

"No," Sam says hoarsely. "He's Dean. He'll always be Dean."

The motel bathroom is gone. This room is spacious, vaguely familiar, sunlight pouring through a wide, tall window, even though the sun is already down outside. The man – Gabriel, Sam thinks desperately, his name is Gabriel – toasts him with an ice-choked glass and takes a sip. "Things change. Some of them, at least."

"Who are you? Or maybe I should be asking what you are."

"Everything you aren't," Gabriel says easily. "Rich, for one. Powerful. Oh yeah. I have everything you don't, Sammy. And I have Dean."

It's hot here, hotter than it should be. The light from the window burns, redder and brighter than sunlight. Sam glances at it, feels no surprise at the flames licking at the heavy draperies. "I'll get him back," he says. "You can count on that."

Gabriel gives a slow nod. Sam hates that smirk, suddenly. Loathes it with a gut-level intensity he isn't sure he's felt since Jess's death. "Did I mention I have friends?" Gabriel asks conversationally. "Lots and lots of friends."

Sam licks dry lips, and feels sweat tickling its way down his temple. "If that's what you call them."

"Would you like to meet some of them? Because I promise: they're just dying to meet you."

Sam draws a breath, and flames engulf the room, searing his skin, sucking all the oxygen away. He reels, catches himself on a low divan, sees red eyes through the flames, slaver dripping from toothy jaws.

"Thing is, Sammy," Gabriel says calmly, voice carrying through the din of snapping flames, "you can see me. Us. But what you don't realize is: WE SEE YOU, TOO."

There is no difference between Gabriel's grin and the ones Sam sees all around him. He can't breathe, smoke fills his lungs, and teeth close on his throat. There is a gristly popping sound, and he tastes blood.

* * *

He opens his eyes to a water-stained ceiling, and his father's drawn face.

"Getting kinda tired of this little routine we're doing here, Sammy," Dad says. He rubs his hand over his face.

"Wha."

His head is aching, a familiar violent pain, and he sits up with a groan.

"What did you see?"

Sam swallows bile. "We gotta go. Now, tonight, it's –"

"You ain't going anywhere, buddy. Not right now."

"But Dean –"

"You got a nosebleed and an earbleed, both." Dad swallows, keeps right on looking grim while Sam reaches up to touch his nose, not really all that surprised that it's true. "Don't gotta tell me, whatever it was, it was bad. Is he – Is Dean –"

"He's alive." Dad holds out a glass of water and Sam drinks thirstily, tasting ashes on the back of his tongue. He still feels hot, and there is a phantom pain in his throat, like an old, mortal wound. "I'm sure he's alive. But something -- It's Gabriel."

"The brother."

"He's -- He's not human, Dad. Or not completely. Not anymore."

Dad gives a slow nod. "Possessed?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I couldn't -- I couldn't tell."

After the water there's a bottle of beer, chilled and sweaty, and the pain of his unstrangled throat has begun to recede, supplanted by a throbbing headache centered at the back of his skull. He sips the beer, and says, "How did Dean find them so fast?"

Dad drinks some of his own beer – from the angle when he tilts the bottle, almost gone, and it may not have been his first of the evening, who can say – and shrugs. "Might already have known who they were before he split. Went right to em."

"Maybe." It doesn't feel right, but he doesn't know anything, not for sure.

"So what's the game plan?"

His father is looking at him expectantly, and Sam fills this strange moment by drinking his cold brew, letting it wash the rest of the taste of fire from his mouth. Dad's always been the one who's sure, who's barking orders with no flicker of doubt that they'll be followed. Sam isn't used to being on the receiving end of this look, like he has answers. He doesn't, he never has, but for the need to get Dean back. Back with him, back where he belongs, where he is loved, where he is FAMILY.

He shrugs uneasily. "Check things out, see Dean, find out what's going on. Beyond that -- I don't know."

After another hour he takes some pills for the pounding headache. Lying in bed later on, the room silent and his father tense and unsleeping at his side, he wonders why, in all the visions of Dean's history, his biological family, he has never seen Dean as an adult. Wonders what that means.

He pulls the blanket and spread higher over his shoulders, fighting down a chill of icy fear.

* * *

According to the map, the northern and eastern outskirts of Fleming are also the edges of the Fleming estate. It isn't marked as such, but Sam can see no other reason for the enormous chunk of land that is otherwise unmarked: no plats for individual holdings, a space large enough for a modest state park, but this isn't state or federal land. It's private, and there is only one family he knows of locally with such substantial acreage.

The Fleming estate is a big spot of emptiness on the map, and driving through the namesake little town, Sam feels very small by comparison.

"Isn't much, is it?"

Dad drives slowly down the tree-lined main street, face unreadable as he glances around.

"Pretty."

It is. Fleming is small, picturesque, big neat houses with immaculate gardens, and in the center a town square straight out of a postcard, train station, expensive shops. The people out and about look like Sam's Stanford-era image of the good life: well-dressed, smiling, WASP-y families, moms and dads and kids, enjoying one of the last weekends before school starts back up.

Looking at it makes him feel vaguely sick now. He can't imagine a place where Dean would fit in less. No pool halls, no cheap little diners. He hasn't seen a single fast-food place, and among these expensive little imported cars the Impala sticks out as nakedly as if a decked-out street-smart prostitute were to start shopping among all the neat, sparkling families.

"Fucking Stepford," Dad mutters, and Sam doesn't nod or say anything, but he silently agrees. The wrongness is vague, but it's there. Fleming is way too perfect. From the people to the squeaky-clean streets, the immaculate cars, the gleaming shop windows, it's unreal.

He fights down a shiver and clears his throat. "The house. We need to find the house."

Dad stirs but doesn't reply.

According to the map there are only two roads bisecting the Fleming estate. One is a state road, the other simply a meandering line, PR 4, Private Road 4. The woods are heavier here at the northern boundary of the town, old growth left to do pretty much as it wants. They drive considerably under the speed limit, looking for signs. There is no traffic. For a good-sized highway it's sort of strange. There should be commuters, or since it's the weekend, maybe vacationers taking the scenic route. But there are no other vehicles.

"Like they can't see it," Sam whispers.

"What?"

He glances over to see Dad watching him curiously. "The house," Sam continues slowly. "It's protected."

"I'm gonna take a guess you don't mean a security system."

"Wards. But it's old power, very old." Gooseflesh prickles his arms, and he looks down at them without surprise. "This house should be a tourist attraction, but I doubt very many people even know it exists. It's hidden."

"Filthy rich family, right? Pays a lot for privacy."

Sam shakes his head. "It's not that. You feel it, don't you? The energy?"

Dad watches the road, expression flirting with dread, hope, a jittery look of fear. But he doesn't reply. Doesn't need to, really.

PR 4 is tucked away behind old-growth beech, trees that might have been saplings around the time of the founding fathers. It's a gravel road, one narrow lane that does not invite investigation.

"There," Sam says hollowly. "That one."

His father slows until the Impala's barely crawling. "Thought we'd look for the state road."

"We could, but we wouldn't see anything. Even with this one it's protected."

The Impala crunches to a stop on the narrow crumbling shoulder. "Private road," Dad says heavily. "Trespassing?"

"They won't call the cops. The estate has its own ways of looking after itself."

"So we go?"

"We go."

A few yards off the highway the trees close behind them, green and tall. A hawk with glossy rufous tail feathers swoops low, so close Sam can see its eyes, black and unreadable. Don't see me, Sam thinks blindly. Don't see me.

The forest is claustrophobic, nothing but the skinny band of road and tall, whispering trees on either side. They drive slowly, silently, and Sam feels the tension like hands around his throat, fingers tightening until he can barely breathe.

After a few identical miles the trees thin to their left, still undeveloped countryside but it is the beginning of a natural clearing, a broad meadow slashed through the middle by a creek.

There are telephone or electrical wires along the road. Birds line the wires, dozens of them. Sam sees a hawk – maybe the same one – perched between two sparrows, predator lying down with prey, and swallows a thick jolt of fear.

Watching. They're watching us. And who do they report to? They're birds.

"So where's the damn house?"

Dad's face is tight with tension. Sam swallows again and whispers, "We're almost there."

"What is it, a fucking mansion?"

"Yes. But that isn't all it is."

He sees the first of it above the trees. The low-lying meadow, a belt of oak and beech around the edges, and beyond it, a roof topped with a cupola. Long, wide, blending so well with the trees.

The road curves, the trees thin further, and the house is there.

Still a mile away, maybe two, but it sprawls languidly ahead, broad and tall and unspeakable. Sam reaches out without thinking, fingers closing on his father's forearm, and the Impala jolts to a stop.

"Jesus," Dad breathes. "It really is a mansion."

The house is like no other Sam's seen. A part of his brain that can still process informs him of the obvious additions, the added-on sections, making a once-large house now immense. But mostly he can only gape.

A heavy wrought-iron gate closes the way to a broad driveway, and behind it the house stretches wide, three stories at least, a Baroque conglomeration of brick and marble and tile. Neo-Byzantine, maybe, or Second Empire. No, neither of those, more as if some long-ago architect had designed this in a fever-dream, a delirium of styles. Jacobean, Elizabethan, with Frank Lloyd Wright in the low-lying secondary house to the right, squat and jarring.

You could get lost in this house, Sam thinks, and that is what it wants.

He blinks fast, twice, three times, and behind the house he sees the rest. The sun has darkened, but there aren't any clouds today, it's a bright, hot summer day. Behind the chimneys and cupolas is a darker shape, thin towers and minarets angling up into the sky. It's murky, wavering in Sam's sight, and he draws a breath to speak, to say something like Let's get out of here or Don't you SEE, it's huge but it's so much bigger than it wants you to know.

A hawk flutters down to land in a branch a couple of feet from the car. And lips breathe hot and rank against Sam's ear, a voice screaming GET OUT. GET OUT, SECONDBORN.

He claps his hands over his ears and can't hear himself screaming, too.

* * *

"But you didn't see anything."

Sam presses his fingers together over the bridge of his nose. His head feels stuffed full, like he's getting some mother of a sinus infection or something, but he's perfectly healthy. Whatever's filling up his head, it isn't illness. "I told you," he says quietly, "just the house. And that damn bird following us around."

"What bird?" Dad stands a few feet away, putting some distance between them like he's afraid whatever Sam's got is catching. "I didn't see any birds, Sammy."

"Never mind, doesn't matter. Or – it does, but." He sighs, looks squarely at his father. "We gotta get Dean out of here, Dad. This place -- It's not good for him. Not good for anybody. Don't you feel it?"

Dad just looks at him, and Sam feels another stab of wrongness, seeing the lost look on his father's face.

"You don't, do you?" Sam swallows. "It – whatever this is – you're not sensing it like I do."

"Sorry, buddy, I think you got the psychic end of the pool." Dad looks away. "I just came to get my kid back. If I gotta scrag a demon to do it, well." He gives a hollow laugh. "Can't say that comes as much of a surprise these days."

And really it doesn't. Not when all's said and done. Maybe it's fate, kismet, whatever, but Dean doesn't have to be a Winchester for demons to play a critical part in his life. And Sam's sure whatever yelled at him outside the Fleming family mansion was demonic in origin. Gabriel, he thinks, is still mostly human. Mostly. But that voice had held nothing human. He shivers, glancing around the little park where they retreated after fleeing the house. It looks innocuous, pretty little park, complete with playground at one end, swingsets and teeter-totters and an elaborate jungle gym. No kids, but it's early yet.

Dean's here. He knows it, feels it in the marrow of his bones. They just have to find him, and then get him to listen. Might not be easy, that last, but Dean's smart, he's canny. He'll know when two plus two don't equal four.

"Come on." Dad squeezes his shoulder, lifts his chin. "Day's wasting."

Sam follows, and later he blames his preoccupation with finding Dean for distracting him from what was about to happen. Should have sensed it, spidey-skills on high alert after the demon voice at the house. But he doesn't, just lumbers behind his father, and so they're both standing unprepared in the shade of another beech tree when they see a car coming.

"Damn," Dad breathes at his side. "That is a sweet ride."

His father's face is slack, rapt with admiration. Sam glances between Dad and car, sees a slick red convertible, engine rumbling like the Impala's. But it's the driver Sam can't stop staring at.

Because it's Dean. Dean behind the wheel of this –

"'70," Dad says hoarsely. "That's a hemi. Plymouth Barracuda."

"Dad. It's Dean."

Dean parks the Barracuda further down the street, an angled slot near a trendy-looking little restaurant. Clots of people out front, probably waiting for tables. Belatedly Sam thinks, It's Sunday, early, that's a brunch crowd. Kids aren't even out yet for the park, that's why no one's playing on the swings.

He shrinks back behind the cover of the trees, thinking blindly that he's glad the Impala's parked further away. Unsure why he doesn't want Dean to see them yet, only that he is. Not the car, not them.

Dad's still standing there, looking lost, puzzled. Sam yanks him back, just in time for Dean to step out of his gleaming new muscle car. Dean who's wearing the wrong clothing, no jeans and leather jacket, just slacks and an ordinary shirt, even has the tails tucked in.

"Dean," Dad says thickly, at the same time a very young voice cries, "Unca Dee!"

A child detaches from the small crowd, pelting down the sidewalk in Dean's direction. Four, Sam thinks, maybe five years old, dark-haired, and Dean scoops him up, swings him high before settling him on his hip. Dean's laughter rings clear in the air, separate from the rest of the brunch folks, familiar and devastating.

Other people are coming over as well. Clearly this is a meet-up: a blonde woman carrying a baby, a dark-haired woman in a sleek summer dress. They hug Dean, too, quick cheek-kisses, more laughter.

And another companion, male. Sam's heart stutters in his chest, gives a leap and settles into pounding far too fast. Tall, dark wavy hair, an easy smile on his face.

"Gabriel," Sam whispers. "That's him."

At his side Dad says nothing, and Sam sees Gabriel pause, the minute hitch in his step.

The little group hears something, probably a call inside, because they're moving into the restaurant, Dean still holding that little boy, who's chattering about something to him. Dean's smile is wondering, not just amused but something deeper, something that moves Sam's heart in a wholly different way. Dean, he thinks, loves this child already. It's been less than two weeks, but Dean loves this little boy, is connected to him.

Gabriel pauses on the sidewalk after the others have gone in. His gaze focuses immediately on Sam's hiding place. A thin smile lifts the corners of his generous mouth, and he waves once. Smile gone, he mouths something, and then ducks inside.

Dad stands very still, watching. Sam pries his dry lips apart, hears only a wheeze of air instead of words.

"Guess he found them," Dad says hoarsely.

Sam nods, and thinks, You didn't hear him. You couldn't. But I did. "He's mine now," he said. Mine.

Dad gives him a grim look. "Time to get him back," he says, words as stark as carved granite.

"Yeah," Sam manages. "It is."

* * *

** END PART TWO**

**to be concluded in part three. EB**


	21. Chapter 21

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2009**

**Part Three**

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire.

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly.

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

(Sara Teasdale, "There will come Soft Rain")

**21.**

He feels, sometimes, that he has lived here all his life.

Outside his room lies the east garden, his mother's garden. It's not the formal garden at the front of the house; that's maintained by a silent group of dark-skinned men Dean hasn't yet met. No, this garden is – was – his mother's, small and overgrown. As far as Dean can see, no one touches it now, not even the gardeners.

It's a manageable size. It isn't like the rest of this place, huge and echoing, too large for such a small group of people. He likes to think of a woman tending that little garden.

Grace. His mother's name was Grace.

He squints into the sun and stares out at the weedy patch of green, listening to footsteps outside his door, the soft tap of knuckles. Marisol, shy and as out of place as he, strangely, is not: "Señor Fleming, breakfast."

"Thanks," he calls, staring out the window. "Be right there."

The closets are filled with clothes he didn't buy. "Gotta have something decent to wear," Gabriel said, not quite making a face at Dean's torn jeans and flannel. "Don't you get it? You're my brother. I thought you were dead. Rafe – Dean, there's nothing I wouldn't get for you. Nothing on the goddamn planet."

"My name is Raphael," he whispers against the glass.

He's never had a room like this. Not even his first bedroom, all his, familiar and warm and safe. He's never seen a room like this outside of movies. This bedroom is huge, more like a whole apartment: sleeping area, gigantic bed that would easily sleep him and Sammy both, and maybe a cute chick besides; a fireplace and a sitting area, ornate couch and two heavy chairs, a table with a vase of fresh flowers, replaced daily by some invisible servant.

"Fucking fairy tale," he says under his breath, and feels gooseflesh prickling his arms.

His stomach rumbles, and he goes to the bigger of his two closets. Not his style, nowhere near, but he's finding out that rich people really do dress differently, act differently, think differently, and he's rich now, too, isn't he? One side of the closet is all shirts: cotton and silk, and more cotton so expensive it feels like silk. Blue and cream and white and gray, like a freaking banker, and a rack of ties, gleaming in orderly rows. Suits, pants, jackets, coats. He could wear a different set of clothes every day for two months and still have never taken the tags off half this stuff. Socks and damn silk boxers, but not so many shoes.

"We'll get you fitted next week in the city," Gabriel had said, that funny little disapproving wrinkle between his eyes while he took in Dean's good solid work boots. "Good shoes. You'll wonder how you ever did without them, I promise."

The idea of shoes made for his own feet is so alien, he can't even contemplate it.

He yanks down a shirt at random, a pair of pants that don't seem like they're part of a suit or something, and puts them on. A belt like butter in his hands, probably cost more for that little length of leather than anything his dad owned in his life.

Not his dad. The guy who'd played his dad. His father is dead. His father's name was Michael.

He looks at himself in the mirror and sees a pale, scared-looking stranger. Frowning, he takes a deep breath and stares until he can see himself again, and goes to the door.

His bedroom is in the east wing, the newest section of this huge house. Mansion, maybe, or castle. Big enough to be. Cut down a couple of whole forests for all this wood, dark and glossy. Ari's told him this is really just guest quarters, overflow; the rest of the family lives in the west section, a ten-minute hike down stairs and up again. "But we'll have Mother's old room redecorated for you," she said, with a brilliant dimpled smile that was nothing at all like Sam's. "It's one of the best views in the house. You'll love it."

The banister feels warm under his hand, alive. He takes the stairs slowly, watching the portrait as he goes by. Some ancestor, great-great-grand-something or other. Old dude, looking fat and way too pleased with himself.

When he was a kid, Sammy always used to ask about family, about grandparents and where were theirs, and did they have any aunts and uncles, huh, Dean, where do they live, what do they do? Why don't we ever see them?

He remembers having no idea what to tell him. Hell, he didn't know the answers. Dad never got around to caring and sharing on the subject, surprise. All our grandparents are dead, dude, and Dad was an only child. Mom, I dunno, maybe she was too. The only family that mattered was them, the three of them.

Sammy stopped asking after a while. Maybe he figured out Dean was pulling it all out of his ass, or maybe he just didn't care anymore.

Got enough family to make even you happy, Sam, Dean thinks. Except it isn't yours. It's mine.

They're all in the smallest dining room. Not enough for Flemings to have a formal dining area; they have three, and that's if you don't count the parts of the house no one uses anymore. Dean has never even thought of having a house so large you shut up a bunch of it because there's no need for all that space. One day he'll open it up, see what's there. Maybe someday when what's open now is actually familiar.

"Dee!" Michael flings down his spoon and jumps off his chair, grinning while he runs to him, grabs onto his legs with both arms.

"Hey, Mikey." Dean bends down and lifts him in his arms. "Morning, kiddo."

Ari's sitting in the chair next to Michael's, looking sleepy and still well put-together. "Morning, Dean." She, unlike Gabriel, doesn't struggle with his name.

Breakfast, he has learned, is a family affair. Gabriel's long gone into the city, but Ari and Helen are always around, Michael and the baby. The women of his family -- sister and sister-in-law -- have made him thoroughly welcome, no less so than Gabriel, and nobody appears to care that he doesn't know which piece of silverware is used when, or that he sits in his chair like he expects it to blow up beneath him at any moment.

He pours himself some cereal and thinks, This is my life now. This is my sister I never knew I had, and her name is Ariel, and I have an older brother – older, not younger and his name is Gabriel and he's married to Helen and they have two kids, which makes me an uncle. Our dad seems like he was an okay guy, except the whole naming us after angels thing, which – whatever.

My name is Dean. But my name isn't Dean.

The bowl of cereal blurs, and he blinks and digs in his spoon.

"What time do you want to leave?" Ari asks, laying her napkin daintily by her plate. She eats eggs but no toast, drinks milk and ignores the coffee. If she weren't family Dean would think she was possibly from another planet. A planet of skinny, gorgeous women who can't possibly be related to him.

He frowns, and she adds, "Gabriel said something about bringing you into the city. Shoes."

"Uh. Anytime, I guess." He wiggles his toes inside his boots.

She nods and says, "Give me an hour?"

"Okay."

Ari smiles. Her eyes are very green. "I'll take you to lunch. I know a place."

He bets she knows lots of places. "Cool."

After breakfast, Ari leaves to dress, and Mikey stands by Dean's chair. His expression is both pleading and imperious, like a pint-sized king brand-new to his reign. "Wanna show you something, Unca Dee."

Dean lifts an eyebrow and finishes his coffee. "You do, huh?"

"C'mon!" Michael's hand wraps around his own, tugging. "Let's go!"

It's a sunny, cheerful morning, and it's hard not to be charmed by that, by Michael's enthusiasm as he steers Dean outside, down the wide stone steps behind the house. Two silent gardeners watch them go, Mikey giggling and leading the way past the manicured gardens, down the gravel path to a stand of thickly planted evergreens.

"See?" Mikey gazes up at him earnestly.

Dean frowns, hunkering down next to him. "I see a bunch of trees. What is this?"

"Mom says I'm not supposed to go in there, but it's 'cause there's nobody to go with me, 'cause she won't and Aunt Ari doesn't have time, see? But now I can 'cause you're here!"

Dean reaches out to snag Mikey's hand, but he dances out of the way. "In where?" Dean asks, and Michael ducks behind a shrub.

"The maze!" Mikey calls, and gives a high, clear laugh.

"Great," Dean mutters, standing up. "Just what I always wanted."

It's both similar to evergreen mazes he's seen in movies, and not much like them at all. For one thing, he can see over the top, just barely. Thinks, Sam would see even more, and shakes his head once, sharply. It's big, the maze, maybe an acre, and beautifully pruned, well cared-for.

It is, he thinks as he starts walking after his nephew, a maze for children. For someone Mikey's size it really is hard to navigate. Dean peers forward over the neat line at the top of the greenery, sees the shrubs to the left wriggling, and smiles.

He rounds a corner, upping his speed a little, and sees a face in the shrubs. A little startled noise squeaks from his throat. He skids a little in the grass, but it isn't Michael. Isn't anyone, just a – mask, maybe, plaster, but so lifelike it sends a superstitious shudder down his spine. Hanging there in the maze, he thinks, what? To freak people out?

"Dude," he whispers shakily, "you fugly."

"Unca Dee!"

It's farther away than it should be, and he looks away from the mask, cranes his head over the shrubs and sees another waving patch of green. "Where are you, kiddo?" he calls, breaking into a jog.

There's no reply, and Dean barely glances at the next mask, or the one after it, somebody's bizarre idea of decoration maybe. No wonder Helen and Ari wouldn't come out here; they aren't tall enough to see over the hedges.

Two more masks and he can see the maze ahead opening up, turns a corner to see a pretty miniature garden, Mikey standing at the center. His face is flushed with triumph.

"I beat you!" he says, and laughs joyously.

"Yeah, you did," Dean says. He's breathless, although it wasn't more than a short jog.

The clearing has been recently spruced up, it looks like, the clean smell of cut branches and evergreens, and the garden has no weeds, the flowering plants immature and not all flowering yet. He can name some of the plants without thinking: rue, yarrow, gentian. Herbs, this is mostly an herb garden, but there are other plants he's never seen before. He's met a few herbalists in his time, more than a few, but he isn't one himself, only knows enough to recognize the big shots, and these are foreign to his eye.

Michael touches the statue at the center, and revulsion boils up in Dean's throat, instinctive and unwavering. Don't, don't touch it, it's WRONG.

"Hey," he says sharply. Michael's head whips around, blue eyes wide. "Come back over here."

He can't explain it, doesn't try, while Michael trots over to him. "What's wrong?"

"N- Nothing."

It's just a goddamn statue, but looking at it hurts, twinges deep in his belly. Just some old dude, but those carved eyes are too real, gazing at him with cool superiority, gauging, assessing. He wears old-fashioned clothing, another movie shoutout, something British and boring, but Dean can't shake the feeling of wrongness. He wants his EMF reader suddenly, fiercely. Bet that nice cane has something sharp hidden inside, he thinks. Dude knows something I don't. Something –

"Dean?"

He flinches, turns in the direction of Ari's shout. "Better go back," he says, putting a shaking hand on Michael's shoulder.

"It's cool, though, isn't it?" Mikey gazes up at him, teeth shining white. "That's my great-great-great-great-great grandfather." He ticks it off on his fingers.

"It is, huh? That's a lot of greats." Dean turns his head slowly, lifts his eyes to glance again at the statue. His throat is very dry. "Looks like a real nice guy," he whispers, and ducks away.

When they emerge again from the maze Ari's standing on the steps by the house, hands on her hips. Her expression is impossible to read, formal. Patrician. "Michael showed you the maze," she says.

"Yeah." Dean looks down at his nephew, sees his smile gone, expression worried at his blue eyes dart between aunt and uncle. "Making sure I know where everything is, aren't you, buddy?"

Mikey nods and gives Dean's hand a squeeze before darting inside the house.

"It's a big place," Ari says evenly. Her expression hasn't changed, head tilted a little to one side, watching him. "I'm not sure I've seen all of it, and I've lived here all my life."

"That statue," Dean says, and has to swallow. His throat is very dry. Adrenaline makes his fingertips tingle. "Michael says that's an ancestor."

"Ezekiel Fleming. He bought this land in 1787, all two thousand acres. Started building the house the same year."

So that's the freaking patriarch. His great-whatever-many grandfather. His head has started to ache. Doesn't look like Zeke approves of the ol' prodigal grandson.

Ariel's cool hand closes over his own. Her smile is slow and brief, a twitch at the corners of her mouth. "I hate the maze," she tells him, eyes flickering past him and then back. "It's fucking creepy."

He coughs a startled laugh and nods. "Yeah. Mikey, though – he's – he thought it was cool."

"He would, wouldn't he?"

"What do you mean?"

She smiles again, tucks her arm through his and lifts her chin in the direction of the house. "Come on. We need to get going or we'll be incredibly late."

* * *

Long ago, in a land pretty damn far away, John Winchester would have liked Fleming, Connecticut. Nice town, by all indications relatively nice people – wasn't much not to like, he thinks.

Now, after Dean with the imposters calling themselves his family, he's just about ready to buy some C4 and blow up the whole town, starting with the damn perfect gazebo in the town park.

Or maybe just that monstrosity of a mansion. Maybe that's all it would take.

He glances over at Sam. "Need to get moving."

Sam looks tired, worn like someone recovering from a serious illness. His limp is mostly gone; this is something else, something John's gut tells him is this place, this family Dean's been sucked into. Or maybe it's not the Flemings at all. Maybe this – gift of Sam's, curse, whatever – maybe this is all theirs.

"To where?" Sam asks. The circles beneath his eyes look painted on, stark. "We need a plan, Dad. Not just fly off half-cocked."

It's on the tip of his tongue to snap something about plans be damned, they need to get Dean BACK. But he can't do it, not to his son's exhausted, too-old face. He shrugs instead. "Got one handy? I'm all ears."

He sees Sam nod with no surprise at all. "Talk to people in town, see what we can find out."

"Thought you said we had to hurry."

Sam shakes his head, reaches up to rub one eye. "He knows we're here. Gabriel, he saw us. I think if we tried to go back to the house now –"

"What?" John barks.

"I don't think we'd be able to again," Sam says slowly. "I don't think it would let us."

"All right, then –"

"We don't know what his plans are, and we need to know. Why he's so happy, why –" Sam shakes his head, and looks away. After a silent moment he says, "Why did he want Dean back? Why is it so important to him?"

"Family," John says gruffly. "Isn't that enough?"

Sam snorts a single hard laugh. "Not even close." His eyes are beseeching. "He wants Dean for something. I think -- I think once we know what that is, then we'll know everything. Everything we need."

John makes himself nod. "Got any theories?"

"Not yet. Dean's biological father asked me if he'd done the right thing. He took Dean away, right? So he was protecting him from something."

John swallows and glances at the window of their room. He's tough, it shouldn't hurt to hear Sam talk about Michael Fleming like he's real, like he's Dean's father, HE is Dean's father. His belly feels cold, his hands twitch with the need to do something, anything, it doesn't matter what as long as his son – HIS son – comes back to them.

"So let's investigate," he says, sharper than he means. "Come on, shake a leg."

He avoids Sam's ancient, tired eyes while he walks over to the tiny pristine bathroom. Shower and shave, that's all he needs. Get his head back on straight.

A month from now they'll all be laughing about this. All three of them.

He turns on the shower with a hard twist of his wrist.

* * *

There's no chain bookstore in Fleming, Connecticut, just as there are no Walgreens, no K-Marts, no Wal-Marts, no McDonald's. The bookstore is locally owned and operated, and Sam walks inside feeling that warm little sense of familiarity he always feels in such places. Books, smelling dusty and spicy and welcoming; low counters, chairs that look sat in, comfortable, beckoning.

It's a fantastic bookstore, and he wishes absently that he could really just browse, just enjoy it. But this isn't a pleasure trip, and he glances around, gives a smile to the elderly man standing next to the cashier's counter.

"Morning," the man says with a nod. "Looking for anything in particular?"

"History," Sam says, opening his hands outward. "Local history, county, that kind of thing. There's no library, or – Well, I didn't see one."

"Was, once. Burned down fifteen or sixteen years ago." The man shakes his head, looks sternly disapproving. "Tragedy."

Sam frowns. "Was anyone hurt?"

"No, no, nobody hurt, just. All those books."

"Yeah. That's -- So do you have anything?"

"Over here."

The man leads him down a dim aisle, reaching out occasionally to touch the dark spine of a book, run a finger over a leather cover. "What brings you to Fleming?" he asks, coming to a halt by the last shelf.

Sam smiles. "Architecture. I'm a student at Stanford, and I was thinking of doing my senior thesis on the Fleming house. Sam Archer." He sticks out his hand, and waits until the man shakes it. His grip is cool and hard.

"Jack Boone," the man says. "This is my store, guess you could tell."

Sam nods.

"Fleming House, eh? How'd you hear about it?"

"I didn't, as such. I was in the area last year, and I saw it. Part of it, I guess. I got curious, couldn't find much on it, but I thought I'd come back out, see if I could get a tour or something. It's an amazing house."

There is cool study in Jack Boone's eyes, not welcoming, but not forbidding; only assessment. "Yep, that it is. Won't find much, though. What there was, burned up in the library fire." He taps a couple of books on a lower shelf. "These here, bit of history of the town, the Flemings. They're private people, mind their own business, but you'll find a bit."

"What I saw of the house – It looked huge."

"Yep."

Boone says nothing else. The books are twenty years out of date, sketching out nothing he hasn't already read elsewhere, but he picks one with a bit of town history, gives a nod as if he's satisfied. "So the Flemings -- They own the town, too?"

It takes Boone a moment to reply, walking with new briskness back to the cashier's counter. "Some of it, yep. Not all."

"Seems like a nice place. Well-to-do."

"Suppose so." A neutral, unreadable look. "That's twenty-four fifty. Cash?"

Sam nods and digs out his wallet. "Say, do you think there's any way I could get a closer look at the house? Maybe find some photos, blueprints? It's for my thesis," he adds with a hopeful look.

His money disappears into the register, the book into a plain brown-paper bag. "Don't guess I know of anything like that," Boone says evenly. "Like I said, we're private people."

First the Flemings, now the whole town, Sam thinks grimly. All right, then. "Well, thank you anyway."

His hand is on the old-fashioned doorknob when Boone says, "Could be one person to tell you a bit about the house."

Sam turns. "Yeah?"

"Woman used to run the library. Anna Stockton." The expression on the man's face has changed; discomfort, reluctant interest. "Retired now, of course. But if anybody'd know about the house, most likely be her."

"Awesome." Sam grins. "Thanks." His smile fades at Boone's lingering uncertainty. "What is it?"

"Mind a word of advice?"

"Go on."

"You don't -- People, they don't just go up the house." Boone looks away, mouth pinched. "It just isn't done. I were you? I'd find another subject for a thesis. Be a lot easier, and a lot –"

Sam frowns. "A lot what?"

"Never mind. Have a nice morning now."

Sam nods slowly, and goes. Outside he squints in the sunshine, the useless book clenched beneath one arm. It just isn't done. Well, probably not.

But he's equally sure that Boone was going to say, "safer."

* * *

_Cont. in ch. 22_


	22. Chapter 22

**Brothers and Strangers**

**By EB**

**©2009**

**22.**

Even when you're richer than God, Dean discovers, New York City is crowded, smelly, and freaking loud. He makes a face, leans on the horn while some chick in a lot of black with about a dozen dogs exits a cab in the middle of the street. Not even the 'Cuda makes up for it, although he has to admit, it's a freaking gorgeous ride. Ain't the Impala, but definitely not shabby.

"You're sure you haven't spent time in the city?"

He looks over at Ari, cool and unruffled in the passenger seat. "Been here, once. A while back. That's about it."

She smiles and shakes her head. "You drive – aggressively."

"Place like this, what else can you do?"

"This is us."

The place has valet parking, a silent, smiling man whose floppy hair reminds him sharply of Sam. Inside is quiet, expensive, the kind of place he should have gone the rest of his life never seeing. He fidgets while Ari speaks to an older woman, and a moment later a short older guy comes out.

"Ah, _buon giorno_, _buon giorno_." He has shining white teeth, a grip like iron when he shakes Dean's hand. "Signor Fleming, is good to see you."

Dean forces a smile. "Nice to be seen."

"Two pair, Signora Fleming, you say."

At his side Ari nods. "To start."

"_Bene_, _bene_."

Being fitted for your own handmade shoes is…a weird experience. Dean's never given a whole lot of thought to footwear; he has his boots, running shoes, a pair of civilian shoes when he has to dress the part in a suit, and that's all he's ever needed. Now his feet are being treated like the crown jewels.

"They're just shoes," he whispers to Ari, while the shoemaker – Ercolani, something – goes in the back. "What's the big deal?"

"You'll see. They're like sex on your feet."

Dean thinks about it. "Sounds good."

Ari laughs.

The fitting takes about an hour, all told, and by the end of it Dean's pretty sure he could get used to it. He's actually looking forward to the shoes.

"They'll be ready by Friday, correct?" Ari tucks away a black card that's probably got some sky-high limit on it. "There's a party."

"Party?" Dean whispers.

"_Bene_, _bene_, of course, the shoes will be ready." Ercolani beams so hard it's kinda painful looking.

Outside the shop, Dean repeats, "Party? What party?"

Ari puts on her sunglasses and looks at him. "Your homecoming party," she says, in a tone that says, "_duh_."

He can't remember ever having a party for himself. Must have been a couple of birthday parties here and there, maybe back when he was a kid in Lawrence, but that feels like a lifetime ago. "Huh," he says.

Ari tucks her arm through his and squeezes. "There are people you should meet. Gabriel knows everyone."

He must have a funky look on his face at that, because her tone goes from proud to coaxing instantly. "Not a big party, not yet," she says, gazing at him from behind unreadable dark lenses. "But -- Dean, this is a big deal, you know? We need to celebrate! Come on, we're meeting Gabriel for lunch."

"Yeah, okay," he mumbles, and lets her lead him to the 'Cuda muttering at the curb.

* * *

The truck stands out in Manhattan traffic: too big, too black, too everything. John sets his jaw, flicks a flat look at the cabbie glaring from several feet down. Eat me, he thinks indifferently, and goes back to watching the red muscle car in the lane ahead.

"How'll you find him?" Sam had asked this morning, and John had just laughed.

"Ain't a whole lot of cars like that on the road, Sammy. Don't worry."

What had really happened was a chance sighting on the road, and his best attempt at covert surveillance. What he hoped to see -- He hadn't been able to tell Sam when he'd tried, and right now he's pretty sure he has no idea.

He's dead sure that seeing Dean strolling out of that store with his filthy-rich Fleming sister stuck in his craw like a big piece of broken glass. The kind of woman who would have sneered at Dean and his jeans and boots a few days ago, and now Dean was what? A project? A fixer-upper?

His teeth squeak together while he brakes for a cheap, flashy little sportscar. Trouble is, Sam's right: can't say if it's danger that has John's dander up, or if it just hurts too much to see him with this wealthy, influential family.

"You're jealous," Sam had observed earlier in a calm, rational voice.

John thought he'd maybe come dangerously close to belting him one for that. But the kid wasn't wrong. Burns like napalm, seeing it. NOT your family, he wants to say, WE are your family. But Dean's been taken in, the prodigal returned, and what exactly does John think he'll do now, skulking around following his boy like a hired dick?

Dean pulls over, and John bites off a curse and can't follow, jerks the truck into the right lane and circles the block. By the time he gets around again, the Barracuda is nowhere to be seen, fucking valet parking everywhere in this goddamn city, and he's lost him.

There's a space at the end of the block. Truck doesn't exactly fit, but screw it. Outside it's humid, the sharp smell of exhaust and garbage along with a mouth-watering smell from the food cart parked a few feet away. His stomach gurgles. Restaurant, this pricy-looking place, must be where they are.

"Lost?" someone asks pleasantly.

John snaps his head to the left, and sees Gabriel Fleming's handsome, smiling face.

"New York's a big place," Fleming continues, gesturing broadly. "Easy to lose your way. Or maybe that isn't what you've lost. Is it?" The smile is toothy, satisfied.

So, this is the way it'll play. Fine. He can do this. He forces a smile of his own. "What I keep trying to figure," he says, "is why'd you want him back so bad? Family like yours, rich, got everything you need – but now you want him. Why's that?"

"He's my brother," Fleming says. His blue eyes are too bright in the sunshine, chips of solid ice, blinding. "Surely you understand the value of family. How's Sammy adjusting to being an only child?"

Fuck you, John thinks, and Fleming must sense it; his smile turns into a grin. "Oh, wait. Not quite only. Mary's lost little lamb, Joseph, he came first."

"You son of a –"

"Word to the wise, John." The smile is gone. "Raphael is back where he belongs now. With us. With his family. It's what he's always wanted. It's what I've always wanted, and honestly? I get what I want." Fleming lifts his chin, doesn't break John's gaze. "Take your only child and leave, now."

John's throat is parchment-dry; he has to fight to get the words out. "Sounds like a threat."

"Does it?" An elegant eyebrow arches.

"I don't think you give a tinker's damn about Dean. You never have. It's something else."

Gabriel blinks slowly, then looks away. "Have a nice day, John. Enjoy the city. Go to a museum."

Dismissed, Winchester.

"Haven't figured it out yet," John says evenly. The clutch of fear – my child, get your hands off my child – has eased; he feels a familiar, cool surge of rational interest. "But I will. You can count on that, rich boy."

Gabriel's full lips purse, then widen in a smile. Not entirely unruffled, for all his calm. He cocks his head to one side, appears to consider a reply, then turns and walks to the front door of the restaurant, disappearing inside.

"You can bet your bottom fucking dollar on it, asshole," John whispers. "I guarantee it."

* * *

The living room of Anna Stockton's house is tidy, pretty in a somewhat overly chintzed way, and smells strongly of mothballs.

"Here you are," she says now, appearing through the door to the kitchen carrying two tall glasses of iced tea. "Hot out today."

Sam takes his tea and sips it appreciatively. "Very."

Stockton sits across from him, setting her tea on the table without tasting it. "You're looking into the house. For a student project, you said?"

Sam nods. "I'm actually looking for a thesis subject, architecture. I saw the house last year, never stopped thinking about it, so."

Even approaching seventy years old, as she must be, Sam can see what a beauty Anna Stockton had to have been in years past. Now her clean bone structure shines through, her eyes clear and sharp. "You won't find much," she says after a moment's pause. "I may be the only person still living who knows exactly how that house came to be. Except the Flemings, of course."

Alarm buzzes in the back of Sam's mind. "It's the family estate, right?" he asks.

"Yes. Building began around 1787, although the house wasn't completed for at least a hundred years after that." A line appears between her fine brows. "I'm not entirely sure it's completed yet, for that matter. It's always been a hodge-podge, different styles, that sort of thing."

"Must be expensive to maintain."

"Oh, I'm sure. Terrifically expensive."

The frown lingers, and Sam says, "But?"

"It's…curious, is the thing," Stockton says slowly. "The Flemings are of course wealthy today, have been for more than a century. You know I was the town librarian for many years."

Sam nods.

"I put together a bit of information on the town founder. Ezekiel Fleming, the paterfamilias, I suppose. The house was his – obsession, I think. But the ship that brought him from England – he traveled steerage, you know. The cheapest passage available."

"So he must have earned the money here in the States."

She nods. "He must have. But I could never find out exactly what he did. He simply started building that house one day. Hired the best people he could find. Expensive people, materials. The town came into being from all the crew he hired; the project was so immense, they stayed for decades."

"Inheritance, maybe?"

Stockton meets his gaze squarely. "You aren't a student, are you?"

Sam swallows, and shakes his head. "Used to be. Not anymore."

"Ezekiel Fleming married after only a year in Connecticut. A woman named Sarah Ransom. She bore him three daughters and two sons. His eldest son, Gabriel, also had two sons."

Impatience unfurls in his belly, hot and twisting. "And?" he bites off.

"Look at Ezekiel's sons," Anna Stockton says, "and you will know how Ezekiel Fleming got his money."

Sam stares at her.

"I'm an old woman." She looks past him, out the wide front window. "And I don't think I'll be here much longer. But you're young, and – there's still time. You can stop them. If you're strong enough."

"Stop the Flemings?" he asks, shaking his head. "Stop them from what?"

She has never touched her tea. Now she picks up her glass and drinks thirstily, a startling glug-glug as she downs the entire glass at once. "You should go now," she says, wiping her mouth on the back of one narrow wrist. "Be careful. Follow the sons."

He nods stiffly. "Did he –"

"I won't tell you," she snaps. "They won't LET me."

"Who? Who won't let you? The Flemings? Gabr –"

"Do not say his name," she whispers urgently. "Do not. He will see you, he will hear. Be quiet, stealthy. Hurry. Hurry!"

He's standing, backing a pair of steps toward the door. "Miss Stockton –"

She waves a trembling, imperious hand, and then presses it to her forehead. "Go now, go, please."

"Thank you," he whispers, and fumbles the door open.

* * *

_TBC. EB._


End file.
